Why the sea is boiling hot

Posted by Uncle Bob on 05/11/2009

In my keynote at the Rails Conference last Wednesday, I spoke about What Killed Smalltalk and could it Kill Ruby Too?. In this keynote, as is my wont, I spoke about the need for our industry to define itself as a profession, and for us to define ourselves as professionals. I closed the keynote with this statement: “Professionalism does not mean rigid formalism. Professionalism does not mean adhering to beaurocrasy. Professionalism is honor. Professionalism is being honest with yourself and disciplined in the way you work. Professionalism is not letting fear take over.”

David Heinemeier Hansson, inventor of Rails, and affectionately referred to as @dhh has posted a blog in response in which he asserts that we need artists as well as professionals, and draws a dichotomy between the two. The dichotomy is a false one…

We are a community of artisans. We make things with our hands! We all strive, like @dhh, to make things of great beauty and utility. In no way, and by no means, do I wish to assail that artistry. Indeed, my hope is to free it. I want to convince all programmers that the desire for, and the pursuit of beauty is the way you satisfy your customers. The only way to go fast, is to go well.

I want developers to take pride in their work. I also want them to take pride in the way that they work. I want them to be able to look back on the last few days, weeks, and months, and be able to say to themselves, “I made something beautiful, and I made it well.”

We are a quirky lot. Some of us wear faded jeans with yesterday’s spaghetti on them. Others wear T-shirts that have PI wrapped around them. There are beards, tatoos, tongue-studs and hair in all shapes and colors. There are hawaiian shirts and sandals. There are jackets and ties and sometimes even suits. Some of us speak carefully. Some of us drop F-bombs at a whim. Some of us are liberal, and some are conservative. Some of us relish in being seen, and some of us are glad to be overlooked. In short, we are a group of diverse people who are drawn together by our common passion for code.

There is nothing wrong with this diversity. Indeed it’s healthy. The fact that we all think differently about styles, language, appearance, and values means that there are a zillion different ways that we can learn from each other. And in that learning grows the seed of our profession.

So @dhh is right, at least about the diversity. We should all relish the opportunity to share ideas with people who think differently than we do. But @dhh is wrong when he draws the dichotomy between artists and engineers. Every engineer is an artist, and every artist is an engineer. Every engineer strives for elegance and beauty. Every artist has the need to make their art actually work. The two are inextricably tied. You cannot be one without also being the other.

Now, certainly there are environments where the engineering side of things is emphasized over the artistry side. In extreme cases the artistry is repressed into near non-existence. Such places are soul-searing hell-holes that every programmer should strive to escape (or for the brave: change from within!) Indeed, @dhh implies that he worked in such places and found he was “faking [his] way along in this world.” I completely understand that.

But then @dhh makes his biggest mistake. He equates the professionalism I was talking about in my keynote with those repressive environments. He seems to think that professionalism and artistry are mutually exclusive. That wearing a green band means you give up on beauty. That discipline somehow saps programmer happiness.

But remember what I said when I closed my keynote: “Professionalism does not mean rigid formalism. Professionalism does not mean adhering to beaurocrasy. Professionalism is honor. Professionalism is being honest with yourself and disciplined in the way you work. Professionalism is not letting fear take over.”

This is not a complete definition; but it will serve for my current purposes. Because, you see, I made a big mistake during that keynote. And it is in how we deal with our own errors that the claim of professionalism is most frequently, and most thoroughly tested.

In my keynote I used a metaphor to link hormones and languages. I said that C++ was a testosterone language, but Java was an estrogen language. And then I used the word “insipid” to describe Java.

Now clearly C++ and testosterone have very little in common. My use of this metaphor was an oratory device – a joke. As far as the operation of that device is concerned, it was a success. The vast majority of the audience laughed, demonstrating to me that they were a) listening and b) understanding and c) open.

There is a kind of artistry in making oratory devices like this, and I take a certain amount pride in it. Such devices need to be timed appropriately, delivered skillfully, and used to gauge the audience. They can help to turn virtually any dry topic into a compelling speech.

On the other hand, the construction of this device had a significant flaw. I had equated women with weakness. This was not intentional. I do not think of women as weak. But there it was: Estrogen === Insipid. If you were a woman in that audience, how could you come to any conclusion other than “Uncle Bob thinks women are weak.”

How did I make this error? Lack of discipline. I did not test this keynote adequately. I should at least have run it past my wife! I mis-engineered my art! (Or perhaps my engineering was artless <grin>).

Within minutes of concluding my talk, the complaints appeared on twitter. Women who had been offended and hurt by the remark were tweeting their dissatisfaction. Some men were joining them.

There were two ways I could have responded to this. I could have asserted that these people were just being too sensitive; that they should have realized that this was just an oratory device and that I didn’t mean any harm; that they should just recognize me for who I am and not get so hung up in their own fears and values.

But I think that reaction would have been unprofessional. Why? Because it would have been dishonest. The truth was that this was just a stupid mistake. I built the device badly. I executed the device without testing it properly. I screwed up; and I needed to own up that. So I immediately tweeted apologies to those concerned and ate an appropriate amount of humble pie.

The reason I told you this story (at the risk of sounding somewhat self-aggrandizing) is so that I could use it to help define professionalism. The construction of my oratory device was unprofessional. I should have tested it better. I should have realized the danger of using gender comparisons and taken greater care with their use. I could have done better.

We professionals aren’t prefect. We all make mistakes. We recover from those mistakes by owning up to them as mistakes. We do not cover those mistakes by claiming that everyone else is wrong.

Confronting your mistakes and taking appropriate action is a discipline. It is a discipline of honor and self-honesty. It is a demonstration that we do not let the fear of our own errors take us over.

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