>How many rules do you think govern programming? How many exceptions
>to these rules? How do good programmers know when to apply them?
>The answer: years of experience. I don't think you'll be able
>to write any reasonably length book that captures all of this
>hard-earned wisdom. The implication would be that becoming a
>good programmer is something that can be done in a matter of
>days or weeks. Guidelines can be thought of as the rules of thumb
>that are applicable widely enough to be worth writing down and
>teaching. But good luck writing down the exceptions (and don't
>blame psychology if you have trouble).
Has anyone here seen any of the work done by the software patterns
community? If so, what's your impression? They seem to care greatly
about what matters to programmers and their organizations, in a way
that seems compatible with the PPIG community. Their work is largely
experience-based and empirical (studying real programs), but they do
not yet have a sound psychology or science base yet. However, they
do sometimes pay attention to low-level concerns; see, for example,
Kent Beck's Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns.
>But being a craft discipline is not completely shameful! Craft
>disciplines get a lot of things right before they can be explained
>scientifically. Bridges were successfully built before static
>mechanics were understood or gravity explained.
This is the credo of the patterns community, many of the original
members of which have begun to move on to incorporate other ideas,
too.
>So my advice is to summon up as much experience as you can and be wise
>in your exposition. Nobody else, I think, can do much better right now.
>The caveat I promised is that we all should still be interested
>in long-term research establishing a scientific foundation.
Yes, please do press forward with good work of your own. There
seems to be an opportunity still open in this area to do valuable
and interesting work that few others are doing now.
