Enlighten us folks who aren't methodology scenesters. What is wrong this Uncle Bob guy?
He has a big respect in certain circles, and even I have the Refactoring book, which was a disappointment for me, because it was about practices that was trivial for me after two years of proferssional work, while going into the details too much.
Another admirable trait I've witnessed is his willingness to say "I don't know" when asked questions outside his circle of competence. He often says it very bluntly (which has caused some heartburn to some ThoughtWorkers once in a while, but that is another story).
His "Enterprise Patterns" book is very useful for anyone working on enterprise software. I believe DHH was influenced by the book when he was hacking Rails.
His upcoming book on rich gui apps seems promising too. Also he doesn't make outragoeus claims or adopt a condescending atitude to programmers who don't work the way he does/advocates (unlike say Robert Martin). I wouldn't dismiss him as a "know nothing" talker/blowhard.
As I said, just anecdotes. Make of them what you will.
P.S. I also enjoyed Enterprise Integration Patterns by Hohpe and Woolf.
Cheers!
Someone like Linus Torvalds can pull this off, Bob Martin, not so much. Linus nearly always has good reasons for his stated beliefs and agree or disagree you can see why he says what he says. Also he is an acknowledged uber hacker. Bob Martin does write code(Fitnesse) unlike most other agile "guru"/consultant types, but it isn't really anything extraordinary (which is all right, as long as he doesn't presume to then teach other people how to program "correctly").
It is interesting that a great hacker like Peter Norvig is modest and unassuming and chooses his words carefully, as does Knuth for example, while people like Ron Jeffries and "Uncle" Bob say outrageous things with nothing to back them up but faith in their ideology .. err.. methodology .