Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by eesmith on Friday October 06, 2017 @09:58AM (#15416801)

It is not reasonable of you to ask unless you've made a reasonable effort to look for their software and failed.

Robert Martin's best known open source software contributions are for FitNesse, which is reasonably well known in the testing world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse

Tell me, have you read the Space Shuttle control software? There are dozens of not hundreds of papers about NASA's development process. Are you saying that since you can't look at it, you're not prepared to take their word that the software is successful?

Because it seems to me that there are other ways to judge success than simply reviewing the code.

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Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by chrisseaton on Friday October 06, 2017 @10:17AM (#15416946)

Sorry I didn't really mean about reviewing the code - I meant being able to see the successful project.

I listen to Torvalds when he talks about how to write his software, because his software is a massive success.

I'd listen to NASA because their missions were a success.

Why should I listen to other people like Robert Martin? I had seen FitNesse in the past, and while I'm sure it's a useful and well-written bit of software, I don't anyone would remotely describe it a particularly notable success. Why would I listen to his ideas more than anyone else who's written a testing framework that some people use?

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Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by eesmith on Friday October 06, 2017 @10:34AM (#15417064)

Ahh, I apologize. I misunderstood your original comment.

I'm still a confused off by your comment "I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, .. and so on." when you say that you've "seen FitNesse in the past". Did you not know that he is part of the project?

Have you looked to see what projects they've been on?

FWIW, I don't think Fitnesse is well-written. When I looked at it about 8 years back there were several security holes in it, including no protection against directory traversal attacks.

It was clear that the developers had no experience working in an untrusted environment. Which, to be fair, is the security model for a FitNesse deployment.

(FitNesse.org is served by FitNesse-v20160618, so that's not 100% true.)

I don't trust Martin's views. I think he's full of bluster, and makes assertions far beyond what is justifiable. For example, he did a Prime Numbers kata some years back where it was clear he was gaming the problem - unknowingly, I think - so that his cute but inefficient two-liner would be an acceptable answer, while poo-pooing those who immediately thought to use a sieve variant.

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Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by chrisseaton on Friday October 06, 2017 @10:40AM (#15417113)

I had forgotten about FitNesse but I remembered it when you mentioned it.

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