-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Friends, coders, methodologist, lend me your ears;
I come to bury experience and knowledge, not praise it.
The work that men do lives after them,
The glories are interred with their retirement parties;
So let it be with experience and knowledge. The noble methodologies
Hath told you that experience and knowledge are not needed.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And experience and knowledge have been replaced.
Good sir, they say, have you mocked methodologies?!? Have you gone mad?!? We sir, like our hope cocktails and will not stand to hear your mocking!
Riddle me this methodologist, why should we follow these principles?!? What are their genesis?!?
Sir, they say, these were handed down to us from above, we do not question them.
Friends this is a sad, sad, sad state indeed. Drunken on hope cocktails, these methodologist come and say to us, "Follow me and I will lead you to the promise land, I have access to the secret doctrines and only I can interpret them correctly."
All these statements may be true, they may have access to the "secret doctrines", they may have the ability to "interpret" them correctly. There is just one thing:
"Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?"
Who could teach Shakespeare to Shakespeare? Who taught Virgil to be Virgil? Who told Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey?
The ancient Greeks having no history or doctrines were able to be truly beautiful. They were able to soar to heights never reached before or since. They did not blindly follow, they led and are still leading!
"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans."
-- Homer, The Iliad
Book I, Line 1
Friends this is a sad, sad, sad state indeed. Drunken on hope cocktails, these methodologist come and say to us, "Follow me and I will lead you to the promise land, I have access to the secret doctrines and only I can interpret them correctly."
All these statements may be true, they may have access to the "secret doctrines", they may have the ability to "interpret" them correctly. There is just one thing:
"Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?"
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Who could teach Shakespeare to Shakespeare? Who taught Virgil to be Virgil? Who told Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey?
The ancient Greeks having no history or doctrines were able to be truly beautiful. They were able to soar to heights never reached before or since. They did not blindly follow, they led and are still leading!
"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans."
-- Homer, The Iliad
Book I, Line 1
Sing goddesses of men that were truly beautiful. Men that gave us the Sciences. Men that gave us the very idea of History. Men that gave us hope.
"Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door"
-- Hesiod, Works and Days, Line 96
Hope not in a cocktail, the thing itself, the authentic thing.
True experience and knowledge, the kind which builds worlds, cannot be drunken down, it can only be lived. True experience and knowledge, my friends, becomes one with us. It is created, not drunken in. It is made true to oneself. It cannot be disproven since it is part of one, it becomes one's duty.
"It is far better to discharge one’s prescribed duties, even though faultily, than another’s duties perfectly. Destruction in the course of performing one’s own duty is better than engaging in another’s duties, for to follow another’s path is dangerous."
-- Bhagavad Gita, 3:35It would be better to be destroyed than to follow! For blindly following is worst than not existing, it is not even being. To follow another's life, to not be authentic, is to not even exist. Live your life, your experience, your knowledge.
Fellow developers, do you know why you do a daily stand up? Is testing first part of who you are as a developer? Is continuous integration part of your definition of done, even if it is not required by your team?
Beware my friends for it is far easier to drink down hope cocktails than to gain true experience and knowledge. It is often hard to tell at first who is buzzed on hope cocktails and who actually has true experience and knowledge. You can tell a drunkard when they pererrat to another cocktail and quote new sages, this herd will be moving to new pastures, grazing on new hope cocktails, worshipping new idols.
"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
