The "Any Competent Programmer" BS

The "Any Competent Programmer" BS: "An Embedded.com columnist wrote an article asking 'Why aren't developers interested in Ada', which was pretty good, but the first comment on the article kinda got me going.

Scottish Martin's comments do absolutely make some good points, and I had no quibble with them. He ends his comment, though, with one of my pet peeves: 'A professional team can develop quality software whatever the chosen implementation language and toolset.' (And that just set me off--though Martin's just in the wrong place at the wrong time. :-)

That statement is analogous to the 'Any competent programmer can write good code in any language' trope.

The advocated language could be Ada, Lisp, Haskell, or any of many others that face an uphill struggle for acceptance. The advocacy is dismissed with the claim that programming language choice just doesn't make much difference, and after all, a competent programmer can write quality software in any language.

While this claim about the ability to create good code may be true, it's irrelevant, and is usually thrown in the face of a developer who is advocating the use of a programming language that differs from the corporate herd selection, in order to shut them up, which it too often does. The claim, though, begs the question of how much it costs, in time and money, to develop that quality software using a chosen language and toolset. And whether a different choice could lead to quality software being developed faster and more cheaply, thereby encouraging the creation of even more quality software.

I've argued about this before. Programming language choice does matter, programming toolsets do matter. Programming language and development tools are where the bits hit the hardware, and if you want quality work from a developer, you need to use quality tools.

Seriously, do Indy and Formula One racing mechanics get their tools at WalMart and Harbor Freight? Because 'a professional mechanic ...'

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