DHH - Abstracted Ideals

There was a great interview with DHH on the RubyRogues podcast. The guys on the podcast very much enjoy talking about abstract Ruby programming ideals and this episode they got into a long conversation/argument about the downside of this exact thing. DHH kept making the point that talking about lofty ideas, and attempting to write the best code possible for the sake of some ideal or because you think it will be more adaptable in the future is a waste. Lofty philisophical talk has no value unless it actually produces something with worth. And all the philisophical talk just abstracts you from the actual code. It's pretty humorous to hear him talk compared to most of the conversations on the show. I really enjoyed it because (1) I've seen myself fall into this and waste time attempting to fit code into some principle or making code fit all possible scenarios, and (2) even regardless to code, lofty philisophical conversations happen every day about all sorts of topics that are in reality.. probably irrelivent to the real world. 

A few quotes I enjoyed:

Never try to write code that you think will do better for something in the future. It's guesswork and you will never know. 

It's easy to talk about lofty OOP principles--easy to convince someone about Law of Demeter--code will be so much more maintainable etc. etc. As long as you explain it in a very abstract way, it's incredibly convincing.

"Maintainable" is such a wiesal word.

Design questions.. I find to be an uninteresting domain. I generally don't care about these discussions until you produce code.

If you haven't heard him speak before you should check him out. He has a great video from a talk he did at Standford called unlearn your MBA which is fantastic.

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