The programming blogosphere exploded to Joel Spolsky’s controversial article “The Duct Tape Programmer” which, as Joel said on Twitter, was meant to provoke people:

Of course, nobody would read that or link to it. So I have to embellish. “Duct tape” instead of “simple, well-understood tools.”

I was planning to write on it, but couldn’t as I was suffering from an earache and unable to open the left side of my jaw. Anyway, let me temporarily link to some of the reactions online. Enjoy while I come back with a response if/when I recover.

• The original article, by Joel Spolsky
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life
• Jamie Zawinski
• Uncle Bob (Robert Martin), of Object Mentor
• Cedric at Otaku
• Jeffrey Palermo
• Alan Skorkin
• Mark Needham
• Kirk Knoernschild
• Ian Cooper
• Michael C Neel
• Dhananjay Nene
• Jak Charlton
• Tim Barcz
• Ayende
• Lee Brandt
• Blog Coward (!)
• Russell Ball
• Peter Seibel
• Tim Bray
• Chuck Hoffman
• Scott Reynolds
• Discussions on Reddit and Hacker News

This is probably one of the best discussions (in recent times) about software quality versus delivery times.

If I missed anybody, please add a link in the comments.

2 Responses to “All About the Duct-Tape Programmer”

1. The Duct-Tape Programmer Explained | Thought Clusters says:

   October 2, 2009 at 7:32 pm

   [...] you had the time to read through all the essays linked to in yesterday’s post about the reactions to Joel Spolsky’s article “The Duct-Tape Programmer”. Here is [...]

   Reply
2. Software Short-Term Management and Long-Term Leadership | Thought Clusters says:

   October 7, 2009 at 11:01 pm

   [...] lot of the brouhaha over the duct-tape controversy reminded me of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” which I have mentioned a few times on [...]

   Reply