[headbee]

This is the point that I have the most trouble understanding in critiques of Fowler, Bob, and all writers who write about coding: in my reading, I had always assumed that they were writing about the perfect-world ideal that needs to be balanced with real-world situations. There's a certain level of bluster and over-confidence required in that type of technical writing that I understood to be a necessary evil in order to get points across. After all, a book full of qualifications will fail to inspire confidence in its own advice.

[lostcolony]

This is true only for people first coming to development. If you're just starting your journey, you are likely looking for quantifiable absolutes as to what is good and what isn't.

After you're a bit more seasoned, I think qualified comments are probably far more welcome than absolutes.

[dnautics]

> After all, a book full of qualifications will fail to inspire confidence in its own advice.

I don't think that's true at all. One of the old 'erlang bibles' is "learn you some erlang" and it full of qualifications titled "don't drink the kool-aid" (notably not there in the haskell inspiration for the book). It does not fail to inspire confidence to have qualifications scattered throughout and to me it actually gives me MORE confidence that the content is applicable and the tradeoffs are worth it.

https://learnyousomeerlang.com/introduction#about-this-tutor...