I think this is an experience thing. There are a lot of inexperienced developers, and inexperienced developers tend to become very attached to development philosophies, and attribute all problems to the lack of adherence of their pet philosophies.
This tends to wear off with exposure to the real world. Not only will you find undeniably good code that's written in flagrant disregard to the holiest of doctrines, you'll also find garbage written The Proper Way, more damning still sometimes you'll discover it was written by your own hands.
I don't think it's a coincidence many of the ideas that have the most fervent and zealous followers have names that sound righteous, if it isn't clean code it's pure functions or more recently memory safety. Clearly nobody who is on the "side" of dirty, impure and unsafe code can be right?
There are two kinds of people when it comes to dogma: The faithful, and the preachers. The inexperienced developers are the faithful. They cling to the scripture without proof that it is actually necessary.
Insofar, I agree with your post.
But the faithful need someone to preach the faith, and those are usually not the inexperienced ones. Those are usually experienced developers. Their personal reasons to cling to the dogma are varied: Some may have started as faithful themselves, for some it's stubbornness, an unwillingness to change, maintaining a feeling of superiority, the fear of becoming obsolete, ...
So here we are in disagreement. The preacher is the product of experience and development over time. And in my book, the preachers of dogmas are more of a problem than the faithful who follow them. Because it's the preachers who write the scripture, the preachers who make up arguments why alternatives to the ideology are bad, and the preachers who seek to isolate their flock from the "evil" preditions of alternatives.
> I don't think it's a coincidence many of the ideas that have the most fervent and zealous followers have names that sound righteous, if it isn't clean code it's pure functions or more recently memory safety.
Closing my answer on another point of agreement, it is absolutely not a coincidence, that the wording of dogmas in programming sound eerily similar to that in religious teachings ;-)
Well said. Following a set of rules is no substitute for experience, despite any pressure to do so.
Since every situation is unique, even if similar to others, I think it's always best that programmers rely on their judgement and experience when writing code instead of a set of axioms.
And besides, blindly embracing a set of rules is acting more like a robot, instead of a human being.
Hard not to become dogmatic when your living depends on getting every comma exactly right and you're getting instant impartial feedback every time you get something not quite right :)
I disagree. Programming allows for so much freedom and flexibility in how you approach problems. I find that a large portion of the job is following your gut feeling and putting it into words.
I don't understand this widespread sentiment at all. If the dogma-idea is right, it's right. No matter how dogmatic the people who are defending it are.
Most of these ideas are tradeoffs. If a particular tradeoff is the right thing to do 80% of the time, then it is clearly a good idea. But if you understand it as dogma, you'll do the wrong thing 20% of the time.
Take the pizza example. Which is better, linear code or small functions? It's a series of tradeoffs. Once you get above a screen of code, or 10 ifs, functions become hard to read. Once the same logic has been written 3x, abstracting it is usually a win. Even if it is small. And there is a fuzzy area where it isn't obvious which is better, and debating it is probably a loss over writing it and moving on. Doubly so if you're defaulting to the same kind of decisions every time and so the style is consistent.
In a world full of pragmatic tradeoffs, dogmatism is rarely the right choice. (Unless you haven't learned the tradeoffs.)
My pithy description of software development is "a series of decisions in pursuit of a goal".
dogma invites people to stop using their critical thinking skills.
One of my favorite examples of this:
Everyone would agree that having a newborn in a car means safety is paramount. Everyone also agrees that left turns are less safe than right turns. No one would agree that this implies you should never make left turns in a vehicle with a newborn.
^But the above is how both security people and TDD proponents tend to act, as if there can be no risk assessment and critical thinking involved. We've all made right hand turns when we really wanted to go left because there was just too much traffic, even without a newborn in the vehicle.
It doesn't matter how good the underlying idea is, a dogma is always bad.
Because ideas are highly unlikely to be universally correct, no matter how good they are. Even if an idea is supported by all available evidence, it MUST subject itself to scrutiny and possible falsification, all the time.
A dogma flies in the face of that. It is, by definition "any belief held unquestioningly and with undefended certainty" (quote from wikipedia). Once people follow an idea dogmatically, they are very likely to apply that idea no matter if it makes sense or not. They stop following logic and start following scripture.
It is bad enough if this happens in science, where we really do have systems so far supported by all available evidence. But it becomes a lot worse in areas like software development, where we know there isn't "the one" true way of doing things.
And to head off one likely reply to this: Yes, I apply this logic also to the assumption that "dogmas are always bad". If someone could present proof showcasing a dogma that only has good outcomes, with no negatives attached, then I am willing to change my mind on this.
