Taking away a damaging tool
This is a post about letting go of something you think you need. It starts with an illustration from programming, but it's not about programming.
Bob Martin published a dialog yesterday about the origin of structured programming, the idea that programs should not be written with goto statements but should use less powerful, more specialized ways to transfer control. Edsgar Dijkstra championed this idea, most famously in his letter Go-to statement considered harmful. Since then there have been countless "considered harmful" articles that humorously allude to Dijkstra's letter.
Toward the end of the dialog, Uncle Bob's interlocutor says "Hurray for Dijkstra" for inventing the new technology of structured programming. Uncle Bob corrects him
New Technology? No, no, you misunderstand. " He didn't invent anything. What he did was to identify something we shouldn't do. That's not a technology. That's a discipline.
Huh? I thought Structured Programming made things better.
Oh, it did. But not by giving us some new tools or technologies. It made things better by taking away a damaging tool.
The money quote is the last line above: It made things better by taking away a damaging tool.
Creating new tools gets far more attention than removing old tools. How might we be better off by letting go of a tool? When our first impulse is that we need a new technology, might we need a new discipline instead?
Few people have ever been able to convince an entire profession to let go of a tool they assumed was essential. If we're to have any impact, most of us will need to aim much, much lower. It's enough to improve our personal productivity and possibly that of a few peers. Maybe you personally would be better off without something that is beneficial to most people.
What are some technologies you've found that you're better off not using?
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