[agentultra]

I feel like the navel-gazing-ivory-tower programmer is almost a straw man used by commenters and bloggers to make themselves sound pragmatic. Summoned only be be torn down. Never to be found on an existing software team.

I have come across the architecture astronaut before. But I feel like they’re the result of the culture of the ecosystem the language. The Java and C# programmers whose language requires you to juggle weak types with visibility keywords and null ability. They can be forgiven for not being able to implement a priority queue without a committee and a class hierarchy deeper than the Mariana Trench.

But the perfectionist that never ships anything useful and only ever tweaks interfaces and types? Never met one.

Most people are just trying to balance progress with practical concerns.

[hnlmorg]

That maybe true, but the reason we are having this conversation was because people made those kind of comments. Which lead me to defend Bellard’s POCs.

[stouset]

This sub-thread was in reply to someone who stated that "'code is the product' is what IMO caused the downfall of this entire profession".

[hnlmorg]

…and my comment was in reply to someone who stated they’d never met a programmer who values attractive code over shipping a product. ;)

[agentultra]

Can’t we value both?

If we consider that “attractive code,” to many means simple, elegant… and therefore easy to extend, maintain, few errors, performant, etc.

[hnlmorg]

That's what this wider conversation discusses.