[jackhack]

Sadly this book makes me miss what I used to love about programming, and realize just how much programming has stratified into protected roles. The days of one person sitting down with customers, understanding what they need, and then building that solution, seem to be over. Now it's product owners, and business analysts, and testers and developers, and countless sprints and meetings and cargo cult nonsense to get in the way.

I had a discussion with a developer who cut his teeth on mainframes in the 70s. We had the same opinion about today's overly heavy process getting in the way of achievement and talented people. Scrum & Agile have become a quasi-religion and the idea of a programmer saying "leave me alone for a month and I'll give you some software that solves the problem" are long gone. For better or worse.

And before someone says "well, then you're doing Agile wrong." Yes. We are. As is damn near EVERY shop I've encountered in the past 10 years. That's the point. It's a mess and the culture is broken.

Wish we could just go back 20 years and Code at Work, build things that people want and need, and treat it as a craft again.