Tuesday, March 20, 2007

On "Real Developers"

This is loosely related to my last few posts regarding building a site with no database backend. You can read them here and here.

Bob writes in this post about what makes a "real developer". Read his post and then come back here.

I agree with his viewpoint which essentially boils down to this: "Real developers" don't waste time bashing other languages and methodologies. They use a language to it's full potential. Above all, they use it to create real solutions to real problems.

The reason I think this is related to my other posts is that too often people get caught up in convention and forget to look at what it is they're trying to solve. We make things more complicated than they really need to be and we waste time convincing ourselves that our hammer is better than the other guys hammer when it's really about building a house, not nailing. In the end, it's not the nails and the glue that makes a beatiful house. It's the design and how it feels to live in it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with the idea... but I think your Suduko challenge clearly shows that anyone is capable of falling into the trap of making things harder than they need to be ;-)

John said...

Hi again Ben.

I have to disagree with you on that point.Building the site to use flat files was super easy. :)

I'm going to be writing a follow up post later today about this subject. It's so interesting how this topic has polarized people. It's not a new (sore) subject either, as I'll be showing in my next post, there are some well known companies who have gone with flat file for the exact same reasons that I did.

I'd be pleased if you provided feedback on that post as well.