My colleague at Simplicity Itself, David Dawson, has recently published the three articles in a little blog series on our tendency in software development to do “Development by Slogan”, dogmatically converting useful terms into misunderstood and often false dichotomies, often by stripping away context.
The main point I like from the first article in particular is to not propagate development techniques by slogan. Slogan’s have power and we in software development seem particularly hungry for new slogans, terminology and jargon that we happily ignore the original context of and convert rapidly to our own, often over-generalised, means.
The victim that has undergone the journey from useful term to context-less slogan that David picks is Don’t Repeat Yourself, and it is well worth a read!
The main point I like from the first article in particular is to not propagate development techniques by slogan. Slogan’s have power and we in software development seem particularly hungry for new slogans, terminology and jargon that we happily ignore the original context of and convert rapidly to our own, often over-generalised, means.
The victim that has undergone the journey from useful term to context-less slogan that David picks is Don’t Repeat Yourself, and it is well worth a read!
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