This wasn't my first discussion on the topic. Not even my first team which had a member declaring, that "with dynamically typed (script) languages, you shouldn't bother with patterns and clean code. It's easy and dynamic!"
It blows my brain every single time. Especially when I have this argue, and with the script language of choice I start TDD-ing (even if I have never seen it before). Then this other member comes into play and blows it all up 'cause "we need to get it done quick". Okay I say. My part is all tested, I'm confident that it works, hook it up with yours and we're done.
Time goes by, and the first change requests start knocking on the door. It's not too complex, shouldn't take more than a couple of hours... I might finish until lunch. And than I realize that I've spent hours looking at an (mostly) untestable big bowl of giant spaghetti. Because of "doing it quick", I have to spend days instead of minutes with every change I have to make. Was it really worth it?
I also stumbled upon Uncle Bob's reaction to the same topic.
Sad but true, however another sad fact is that probably relevant people will never get here to read it, not to mention understanding or accepting it...
ReplyDeleteIn case you write a fit-in-the-screen-then-throw-away script, then you don't have to worry. Otherwise this is _the_challenge_ of scripting languages.Omg, what kind of messes did I do with PHP when I was a junior.. Even later when I first used groovy, that wasn't easy either.
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