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.
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?