@Pieter:

Yeah, I’m a regular Hanselminutes listener and so I did indeed also hear that one, but I’m not a very big fan of the only metric of success being “we got it up and working”. While that’s important (and arguably the most important, without which none of the rest matters much), I fear its a dangerous fallacy to think that “working software” is the only metric worth inspecting when measuring one’s success in one’s efforts.

As I think anyone who has tried to maintain anything someone built with much of the VisualStudio System.Tools.Draggy-Droppy stuff would have to agree, most of the cost of software isn’t in its writing or its first success but is in its maintenance, extensibility, and long-term lifecycle over the whole of its existence. Focusing exclusively on initial “it works” as proof of success can be pretty dangerous in my experience.

@One:

One of Agile’s basic tenets has always been (from my perspective) ‘guidance without context is useless as guidance’. Imagine if a book on patterns lacked the ‘problem definition’ part of the pattern; one could hardly use it to make an informed decision about where to apply the pattern.

If ‘done as fast as you can and who cares what it costs to maintain’ suits the business need (e.g., let’s assume time-to-market is the only value that matters for your business), then I’m all for that. But this needs to be an *informed* choice the business makes.

All too often in my experience, the business implicitly makes this decision without actually understanding that they made a choice; developers shield the business from understanding the consequences of their poorly-informed choices and over time this leads to difficult to maintain, etc. software. This in turn leads to developers being seen by the business as ‘roadblocks’ to progress…even simple things take longer and longer to accomplish, reducing business’ faith in developers’ ability to execute effectively (and this spiral continues ever-downward).

Jeff is dead-wrong when he says that quality doesn’t matter (taken literally); what he really means is “quality is not always the most important factor in what you do” and I would have to (generally) agree with him on that.

And Brittney Spear’s success is based on packaging, not quality 😉

@Aaron Seet:

Well, like the title of the post says “Why *I* don’t listen to Stack Overflow anymore” and not “Why *you* shouldn’t”; I’m reporting my own opinion based on my own impressions rather than suggesting guidance 🙂

I don’t find enough content within the formula to keep my interest any longer so I’m (personally) moving on. If you continue to find value in it, then I’d most certainly recommend you continue to consume it, of course.

@Billy Stack:

I think (sadly) that your estimation (generally) is aligned with my own anecdotal experiences in re: the percentage of people that are actively adopting such practices.

But here’s the flip-side of that metric…

I have also experienced that the non-adopters aren’t (gnerally) non-adopters out of choice but are instead non-adopters largely out of ignorance and inexperience — they just don’t know what they don’t know (e.g., they simply aren’t aware that there is a set of principles, practices, etc. out there that they aren’t using).

My own pedegogical experience has been that most developers who are any good at all can grasp the SOLID concepts just fine and in the abstract are in agreement that “principle so-and-so seems on its face to be reasonable”.

It all falls down for them when they try to put some of these practices into place and run into roadblocks (like some of those you list in your comment). Without easy access to people with adequate experience to offer guidance about how to circumvent the roadblocks, most will simply give up and return to their own ways.

The truly DRIVEN development profesional will do further research/googling/blog-reading/whatever and discover the patterns that enable them to surmount their present roadblock, but that’s (in my experience) not even close to the 10% metric you anecdotally report (disappointingly).

I see the development community as being made up of the following groups…

1) the ‘nine-to-five’, this-is-just-a-job-not-a-profession types who aren’t interested in self-improvement; there’s not a damned thing I can suggest to help these people — I cannot MAKE someone want to better themselves, that’s gotta come from within

2) those genuinely interested in self-improvement but lacking the wherewithall to do significant reading, research, investigation, etc. on their own; I can reach out to these people to try to make information more approachable, better explained, etc. than they might get from a random google search on a topic/practice term; these people just don’t know how to get started and those with experience have a professional obligation (yes, obligation) to the practice of software development to do what we can to help them

3) those actively implementing a particular practice/principle but running into actual adoption roadblocks; these people have the drive but not the experience to succeed and they need guidance/assistance from people with greater experience (who have that same obligation to our profession to provide assistance, coaching, etc. where possible)

4) those trailblazers who have no need of much assistance and take to some of these practices like a fish takes to water; these people hopefully *I* can learn something from and they don’t need the help of someone like me for them to succeed 🙂

Is should be noted for the record that there isn’t anything all that new in what I’m suggesting as its really just a re-hash of the technology-adoption-lifecycle in Moore’s still-sadly-relevant work, Crossing the Chasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

I *do* think that Jeff and Joel are indeed preaching to the silent majority (the 90% — to use your metric — that are still doing their work largely ignorant of other practices and principles) but in doing so, they are (IMO) abdicating the unofficial professional responsibility that comes with having a pulpit from which to preach.

Rather than using that pulpit as a lever to improve their profession, they are largely using it as a platform from which to hand out candy treats (tastes great, not very filling) to listeners all too willing to agree with their statements of ‘fact’ because they align with their own sadly-narrow world-view of their profession.

In short, I think that they *are* reaching the 90% majority, but the message they are offering them once they reach them is without useful content and is just parroting what their audience already ‘knows’ and want to hear. This is a disappointing missed opportunity in my mind, but in complete fairness, its theirs to choose to squander.