[EdwardDiego]

> Conflating thumb rules with principles is a sign of sloppy thinking

Multiple dictionaries and thesauruses would disagree with you there. Rule of thumb is often defined in terms of "rules, procedures, principles, or... ...derived from..."

Some sources say that "rule of thumb is a principle or procedure...""

So, you know, going straight to "sloppy thinking" reminds me of OldManYellsAtCloud.jpg.

Anyway, I'm really not sure what difference you perceive - principles are often derived from experience, as well as theory, and they often have exceptions too.

Many people have a principle of not committing violence, for example. _Except_ when (multiple clauses follow).

[Izkata]

That they include "rules" and "procedures" indicates those definitions are based around the "what" rather than the "why". A rule of thumb is something passed down, while a principle is something you come to from experience. A rule of thumb likely started as a principle from someone else.

Rules and procedures are a further watering down of the original idea, where even the rule-of-thumb's justification isn't paid attention to or even has been lost over time.

[EdwardDiego]

Your definitions are very interesting there mate. In some contexts, yep, what's often called a rule of thumb (for example, sparkies use a multitude of <X>-hand rules[0][1] and call them rule of thumb, because you know, there's a thumb involved) are passed down.

But people are entirely able to derive their own rules of thumbs, if we hark to the common definition that a rule of thumb is a principle/procedure/process derived from practical experience.

For example, I rapidly developed a rule of thumb when dating post-divorce that any person who said "I hate drama" in their dating profile is in actual fact the source of any drama, but it took me a couple of disastrous dating attempts to develop that rule of thumb.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule#Electromagneti...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleming%27s_left-hand_rule_for...

[gpderetta]

Pragmatism vs Dogmatism. For example DRY vs YAGNI. The first is more dogmatic: refactor everything that can be refactored, while the second is more pragmatic. The refactor is probably not necessary and might turn out not to be necessary. An even more pragmatic rule is the You Aint Gonna Need It Yet.

[EdwardDiego]

> Pragmatism vs Dogmatism. For example DRY vs YAGNI.

DRY often has exceptions to the "rule"/"principle" too though. And people often blog on these exceptions.

And pragmatism and dogmatism aren't a xor, they're just convenient labels for the -X and the +X ends of the axis.

(Admittedly, the fact that I've seen more "It's okay to have exceptions to DRY" blog posts than "It's okay to have exceptions to YAGNI" indicates you're right about their relative weighting on that axis.)

[galangalalgol]

That is because DRY sets a puzzle for us, how to cleanly reuse some code. YAGNI on the other hand, denies us a puzzle. We like puzzles.

[EdwardDiego]

I like your thinking on this