Comment by MetaWhirledPeas
9 months ago
I think the reason most people have a problem with Uncle Bob is because they know their own practices are a far cry from his recommendations, and they take his prescriptive and uncompromising advice as a personal attack.
I also wonder how many people interpret his advice as that of a mindless, pedantic dictator.
My own introduction to UB was from some random YouTube video he made about programming languages, so my first impression of him included his humor and his ability to see both sides of an issue while being unafraid of having a strong opinion. I really enjoy speaking with and listening to people with strong, long-marinated opinions, regardless of whether I agree or not. At the very least it means they've put a lot of thought into it, which makes for better discussion and learning.
I also lack a long history of code commits, being more of a dabbler here and there, so perhaps I have a smaller surface area for UB's jabs to land upon. Still, I acknowledge that a Clean Code Nazi would probably rip me to shreds for some of the practices I've followed and some that I continue to follow. But improvement is a much more achievable goal than perfection, and gleaning valuable information is better than being dogmatic.
In the end I love listening to UB talk. I don't follow all his practices but I do keep them in the back of my mind. If not worth following strictly they are always worth considering, especially the intent behind them.
So when I see his opinions on comments or his opinions on abstraction and variable naming my first instinct is not to lament about how he is poisoning our youth or insulting my code, but rather to ask myself how I can make use of his perspective. I'd encourage others to do the same; it's much more fun that way, not just for programming but for everything.
As for those of you stuck in "Clean Code" hell with oppressive supervisors demanding strict adherence... that sounds like a personal failure, or a personal incompatibility, or both. I would blame the messenger there, not the message.
My problem with UB is that by promoting his brand and his style so much to junior developers (in both subtle and fairly overt ways), he's warped the mind of a lot of people in a way that effects them for a long time and the people around them. I don't really have anything personally against UB, but dealing with the code that one of his acolytes creates is deeply frustrating and often they claim it's "best practice" even though there's basically no validation around most of his claims and if you read the criticism, they're fairly common sense.