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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

There's definitely two types of very well known speakers.

People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success.

Then there are people who I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, Martin Fowler and so on. I don't know if I should listen to what these people say at all. Does it work? What software projects have they made a success that I can look at?

I suppose in the latter case it's usually closed-source enterprise code that they've consulted on? Well if I can't look at it I'm not sure I'm just prepared to take their word that it's successful.

Is this reasonable of me?

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To be fair to Martin Fowler, his writing is generally more journalistic in its approach. Unlike the others you refer to, who are very ideological in their writing, Fowler describes technologies and programming patterns/approaches, in much the same way a tech journalist would do so. And he writes with a level of detail that suggests he's done some significant coding.

Also, re: open source, he does sometimes write about particular open source projects that have successfully made use of the tools or technologies he advocates. Or simply about the open source projects themselves.

I happen to enjoy a lot of Fowler's blog writing. In particular, I've enjoyed reading his posts on the LMAX architecture. Fascinating stuff.

I'd say Fowler has more credibility because his books are a bit more technical than Martin's. His book on refactoring is evidence he's worked with a lot of code.

I wanted to echo this. Fowler should not be lumped in with the other guys for his Refactoring book alone. Not only is it a really good guide that helps programmers understand how to rigorously make incremental, non-breaking changes. It almost reads like a specification for a refactoring tool.

Really good software engineers write more than code. They know how to clearly outline ideas than can be handed to other developers.

It is not reasonable of you to ask unless you've made a reasonable effort to look for their software and failed.

Robert Martin's best known open source software contributions are for FitNesse, which is reasonably well known in the testing world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse

Tell me, have you read the Space Shuttle control software? There are dozens of not hundreds of papers about NASA's development process. Are you saying that since you can't look at it, you're not prepared to take their word that the software is successful?

Because it seems to me that there are other ways to judge success than simply reviewing the code.

Sorry I didn't really mean about reviewing the code - I meant being able to see the successful project.

I listen to Torvalds when he talks about how to write his software, because his software is a massive success.

I'd listen to NASA because their missions were a success.

Why should I listen to other people like Robert Martin? I had seen FitNesse in the past, and while I'm sure it's a useful and well-written bit of software, I don't anyone would remotely describe it a particularly notable success. Why would I listen to his ideas more than anyone else who's written a testing framework that some people use?

Ahh, I apologize. I misunderstood your original comment.

I'm still a confused off by your comment "I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, .. and so on." when you say that you've "seen FitNesse in the past". Did you not know that he is part of the project?

Have you looked to see what projects they've been on?

FWIW, I don't think Fitnesse is well-written. When I looked at it about 8 years back there were several security holes in it, including no protection against directory traversal attacks.

It was clear that the developers had no experience working in an untrusted environment. Which, to be fair, is the security model for a FitNesse deployment.

(FitNesse.org is served by FitNesse-v20160618, so that's not 100% true.)

I don't trust Martin's views. I think he's full of bluster, and makes assertions far beyond what is justifiable. For example, he did a Prime Numbers kata some years back where it was clear he was gaming the problem - unknowingly, I think - so that his cute but inefficient two-liner would be an acceptable answer, while poo-pooing those who immediately thought to use a sieve variant.

I had forgotten about FitNesse but I remembered it when you mentioned it.

> People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success.

I agree with your examples, Linus Torvalds in particular. However, I would not consider Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates worth listening to on a technical level just because their products are a success.

Bill Gates was actually a pretty decent programmer. His technical insights peter out somewhere in the 1980s or early 90s at most, but he's had some interesting things to say about those eras. (Interesting in the sense that it's someone speaking about the eras that was there in a big way, not necessarily because he's got surprising insights into software engineering or something.)

Do you have any links to his insights? They sound pretty interesting but I'm not sure what to search for to find them.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

  He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who
  were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a
  minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, 
  programmer.

I stand corrected. Thank you for the read.

They are worth listening when talking about the kind of thing they used to make their products a success.

In fairness, Joel Spolsky has done a lot of great work as a founder - founding Stack Exchange being the most notable — but is any of his personal work open source? We don’t know how well written his code is. Twitter is successful but their code has reputation for being horrible.

It's not open source, but he led Excel development didn't he? I can use that and appreciate that it's good quality software so I want to hear about how he managed that.

I don't know if I'm just ignorant, but to be honest I have no idea if people like Martin and Fowler can program at all or not!

Fowler in specific definitely knows a lot about the process of software development though, I mean he's written multiple books on the craftsmanship of software development. Practical advice which a lot of people can see the value of.

Bob is more of a theoretical, philosophical guy it seems.

No, Spolsky didn't lead Excel development. He was a PM.

I happen to like Spolsky a lot but most of the career success we've actually seen from him is managerial, which is not unimportant, but it's not the same as being a dev lead on Excel.

On the other hand, Spolsky's programming advice is much more broad-spectrum and rooted in common sense. I'm not sure you've ever seen Spolsky dismiss a whole category of languages or correctness tools, for instance.

Isn't the PM the one who leads project? (I don't work in a team that uses these terms so genuinely asking.)

A product manager generally owns the spec for a product, but doesn't lead development of it.

(Microsoft has a more complicated PM scheme with I think two different kinds of PMs? So I can't speak to exactly what Spolsky's role was there. It wasn't a small role, but no, I don't think he led Excel development.)

Spolsky's role is addressed in his blog post about The Time That Bill Gates Reviewed His Work. It's an interesting read itself, I recommend it.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

tl;dr He wrote the spec for VBA, aka Excel Macros. It's not being in charge of all of Excel, but I would call that a pretty substantial contribution.

It is definitely not my point that Spolsky's role with Excel was unimportant. Hopefully, none of my comments can be taken as minimizing his role at all. I'm just saying he wasn't an Excel dev lead, which is a distinction that is relevant to this thread.

There is a lot to it, but people still need to find ways to make corporate development work better. Torvalds et al, while great, can't offer a lot to help here. (Except indirectly by producing a good foundation to build upon, like Linux.)

Very.

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