Funny how often Real Programmers deride ______ while using _____ - 1. The Real Programmer's objection to ______ is always that it isn't performant or practical or available on the right platforms. In other words, Real Programmers stick to mature, widely-deployed technologies and become prodigiously adept at dealing with their (well-known) shortcomings while the idealistic Quiche-Eaters fight against the shortcomings of immature, incomplete systems that have unknown and often show-stopping flaws. It doesn't sound to me like Quiche-Eating programmers (distinct from Quiche-Eating pundits/academics) have it any easier than the Real Programmers. They may even be a little bit braver. (You might not want them working for you, though. Let some other company or project bear the burden of polishing immature technologies.)
While what you say is interesting, I consider it orthogonal to the statement given, namely that understanding _____ without real-world programming experience is not helpful when facing a real-world program for the first time.
I disagree. I think a programmer would be much worse off facing his first real-world programming problem armed only with an instruction set and a hex editor than if he had a C compiler and knowledge of C. Just knowing how structs and functions work gives you some mental tools for solving the problem. "Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the _____ in the world won't help you solve a problem like that" just doesn't make sense if read literally -- is he claiming that no set of ideas for structuring programs actually enhances your abilities at all? "It takes actual talent" is just an empty truism (like "______ is never a silver bullet.") So the statement falls apart when taken seriously, which calls the attitude it expresses into doubt.
And that's the dual thrust of the article. It doesn't just make fun of Quiche-Eaters. It also makes fun of Real Programmers. The humor is based on the difficulty of drawing a line between progressivism and trendiness. Or, to turn it around, the difficulty of drawing a line between pragmatism and fatalism. The article is written from the point of view of someone who errs on the side of fatalism (believing that no new ideas will ever prove useful) and who makes fun of people who err on the side of trendy prissiness (turning up their noses at anything mature enough to actually work.) The Real Programmer speaking in the article manages, quite ironically, to make just much fun of Real Programmers as Quiche-Eaters. Consider the paragraph you quoted. Of course the most appropriate ideas for finding your way around a legacy system are the ideas that were used to create that system! That illustrates how the (caricature) Real Programmer's perception of technical superiority is skewed by a lack of historical perspective (quite funny given his relish for history.) Quiche-eating, effete values of _____ have a way of turning into Real Programmer stuff when they became widespread and uncool. That means a lot of today's Real Programmer stuff consists of yesterday's quiche. Structured programming? That's C! The present-day Real Programmer sees himself as the inheritor of the guy who scorned present-day tools as effete, not as the inheritor of the Quiche-Eaters who pushed the development of present-day tools. (Likewise, one might parody Quiche-Eaters as not wanting their ideas to suffer the indignity of becoming mature and practical.)
