In this interview I had the chance to ask Bob many questions that had been stewing in my mind for a while, such as:
* Are there some domains where Object-oriented programming is better suited than functional programming?
* Is the Single Responsibility Principle supposed to be taken literally?
* Is the Dependency Inversion Principle still useful if you have fast compile times and it’s easy to test dependencies without injection
* Testing private methods: surely sometimes it’s okay
* Is 100% code coverage actually a good goal?
* How does Bob feel about programmers who just see their job as a job and aren’t passionate about it
* Is a call for professionalism just unproductive gatekeeping?
* Comparison as a thought leader to Martin Fowler
* Does AI threaten programmer jobs
* Will we have an AI singularity?<p>If any of the above questions have been or your mind too, you might find this interview valuable.
I love his answer on the AI question, it really is a fantastic point.<p>People are scared about developers losing their jobs, but there are really only two possible scenarios:
- Either there is currently too much supply, in which case the number of devs remains the same and the caliber of devs improves, maybe some existing devs are replaced by AI enabled devs
- Or currently too much demand (i suspect this is the case), in which case, given that AI reduces the intelligence/experience threshold required to be a competent developer, the number of devs increases to meet the demand, the opposite effect.<p>Short of a sentient super-intelligence, i don't reckon we have anything to be concerned about