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by Autre 5655 days ago
Well, i'm not sure about that. Aren't we expected to be professionals and act like ones on any given job? Should we just eschew Knuth and express ourselves? Don't think so.

OTOH, it seems like something is clearly wrong here since, we are having a tough time being professional and working with the current crop of languages, tools, technologies, etc and in the same time, fully expressing our vision while enjoining our work.
2 comments
Someone 5655 days ago
IMO, the text is not about personal expression, but about "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." ("the better is the enemy of the good"; Voltaire), aka "real artists ship" (Jobs)

Most beginning programmers will see few, if any, bears on the road ahead of them. That makes it easier for them to just move to the goal line.

Of course, good expert programmers will be able to see which bears actually are on the road, and plan for evading them, and not any other bears.

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hardy263 5655 days ago
Interesting contrasting view. And you are right, we should be professionals.

But on the other hand, if you consider it as a project triangle approach, you're given "Well-designed UI, maintainable code, cheap: pick two"

And as professionals, we want to express our clients' vision as much as possible, so we have to make a balance between having good code and the budget that the client gave us. It's not really the fault of our tools and technologies, but we do try to continually improve those tools so that we can provide the best service.

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