The problem that our industry runs into (NB: not just this industry) with critiques like McIlroy's is that people remember the highlights ("Haha, LP is silly and makes fragile, Faberge eggs instead of robust systems.") instead of remembering the context (Knuth was asked to illustrate LP, he did, McIlroy critiqued the monolithic resulting program more than the LP style itself).
This happens repeatedly (not just this example, many others), and since the vast majority of people are never going to go back to the original sources we have a giant game of telephone. Generation after generation are given a variation on the summary theme, further and further removed from the original context. The speaker will elaborate on the criticism, but since they didn't read it themselves they're actually just bullshitting (semi-honest effort as they're pulling in the information they were given, but it's still bullshitting because they didn't bother to read).
Funny, I came in here to write this exact comment, but I was going to use Word. Wonder why our minds go to MS Office... First thing that comes to mind when we think "big and complicated?"
Let's schedule a scrum. Come ready with relevant user stories and appropriate story points. But maybe we need a powwow beforehand to decide on a theme. Either way I want us to settle on tasks an be ready to sprint by EOD.
- show how to write a spreadsheet application
- here you go, couple of hundred pages it is though
- ahh, silly person, why not type 'excel'
So what happened next? Everybody rolled eyes, or people said 'yeah, typing excel is pure genious'?