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Discussion on: Why I can't recommend Clean Architecture by Robert C Martin

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essiccf37 profile image
essic

I personally don't find him controversial. I remember his deal about "Monads" which were just plain wrong.

To be honest with you since his book Clean Code - which I must say is to me a book that every software developer should read - I do not really see what he brings on the table for today's real world problem or to challenge the state of art of software engineering. Therefore I do not find him controversial at all, he likes himself a lot and is convinced that he's right.

Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Alistair Cockburn, Eric Evans and many others have a far more impact, I think than Uncle Bob and are much more humble which to me, is a quality which goes with intellectual honesty.

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t4rzsan profile image
Jakob Christensen

I remember his deal about "Monads" which were just plain wrong

What is the story on this "deal"? I have not heard about it.

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essiccf37 profile image
essic

Well a while ago he posted on Twitter a statement about what a Monad is. Which gave an epic thread and some discussion on diverse communities.

Here's the Twitter thread, some discussion on Reddit

He also made a talk about Monads (also wrong) which you can find the link on this Meetup page

There other "controversies" like his stand on the guy who got fired of Google or his "tests solves everything software related" philosophy, I took the one about Monad because its less opinionated since a formal definition of a Monad exists and it's not what he said.

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eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe

I just read Robert Martin's "WTF is a Monad?" presentation (slide deck, in PDF format), from about 10 years ago.

Hoo-boy, swing and a miss. Complete misunderstanding of monads.

Clean Code is a fabulous book. (Two thumbs up!)

I've not read The Clean Coder nor Clean Architecture.

Given Blaine's review, probably won't be putting Clean Architecture on my short list. Which is okay, I've already got too many books in my book queue as it is. I try to use my time to read high quality book with good signal-to-noise ratios.

However, I did not get off scott free... now I've added out Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler to my short list.

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essiccf37 profile image
essic

The Martin Fowler's book is a treasure ! I agree.

This "WTF is a Monad?" was quite messy I agree !