[vrnvu]

Cargo cult programming at it's maximum expression.

M. Fowler, Uncle Bob, Kent Beck, GoF authors...

Any book or post by these people is always brought up as a must read. A must read to understand why you should *not follow cargo cults* and see with your own eyes how toxic and damaging these guys are to software engineering culture.

In one hand, I'd say these guys are absolutely revered among computer science students (their main target to sell their books) and developers who have been stuck in the OOP and design pattern rabbit hole for decades without evolving.

In the other hand, the criticism is more present that ever. It's ironic, because the criticism has even lead Uncle Bob to jump the wagon and start to sell Functional Programming in Clojure as a new super *secret formula* and *best practice for real engineers*.

[keeeeeeeem]

I fully agree. If I see those names attached to a project I take it with an extremely healthy dose of scepticism (and usually run the other direction).

I'm somewhat glad I made it out the other side; as a babe in arms programmer I was fully taken in by these ideas. It's a great game of fun creating these overly complex, but ultimately arbitrary, sets of rules. They serve no real purpose other than creating and solving mental puzzles. There's a reason Software Architects don't (shouldn't) exist any more.

[arvinsim]

Any "musts" in Software Engineering that purport to be universal must be met with lots of skepticism.