[rubbingalcohol]

I feel like people in this thread (not just you) are particularly caught up with an oversimplified example that the author even acknowledged may not have been the best example within the article itself.

This article sheds light on something I also encountered frequently when I was doing contracting, and also have to put the brakes on myself when I see I'm going down a bad road: creating more generalized code is not always better than creating code that repeats trivial pieces of functionality but accomplishes distinct tasks.

Part of the difference between "conscious competence" and "unconscious competence" is innate awareness of places where refactoring or normalization will actually create technical debt. I found myself thinking "no duh" when I read the article, but that's only because it was explaining things I was unconsciously very familiar with.

I think this article would be a great read for less experienced programmers. I think the examples may have been lacking, but it would be hard to simplify any application to a point that would make sense to illustrate this issue in a blog post, so attacking it as a "straw man" is actually a "straw man" in and of itself if you fail to account for the author's intended purpose by including the examples. lol

[lmm]

I don't think the article serves any purpose. It uses an obvious strawman to try and argue; this is not going to convince anyone of anything, novice programmer or no.