I have written many articles on just this type of orientation that appears to have infested our profession in the past 10 years or more.

The author here is correct in his contentions as the rest of it has turned our field from a profession into a commodity of service jobs in many respects.

Years ago I was known as a “super programmer”. This was before all the fancy buzzwords describing expertise came into vogue. A “super programmer” had the very traits this author is proud of. We were not “rock stars”, nor used all the cool, new tools, or implemented crazy, complex algorithms into our code. Our job was to get a quality application or system designed and implemented. We were basically the “sergeants” of the Information Technology profession who were known for getting our work done properly with never a night’s concern for a supervisors.

Like the author, I develop very simple and highly legible code. Like the author I ignore a lot of the technical hype in the field as more annoyance and software “fluff” than anything credible to be implemented into any application. Most of it is on display in the public domain as to what can be done with many of the new tools and updated releases of IDEs and the like. However, this doesn’t mean that any of it should be incorporated into your code (unless there is a specific requirement for it) as it will make your development only more complex for less experienced people to understand and cost your organization more to maintain it.

I am seeing a slow, increasing number of younger professionals beginning to speak out against the current, overly complex development environments that seem to proliferate many organizations these days. This is a good sign that the profession’s pendulum may be starting to move back to a sense of sanity…