Have Design, Will Travel

In the article I've linked to, the author discusses how we need to change our understanding of design. For some reason we tend to make our disagreements into horse races or battles where we arbitrarily define sides and then feel compelled to identify ourselves with one side over the other. This restricts our perspective and encourges irrational arguments. "Waterfall sucks, Iterative is the way to go" or "XP doesn't work in the real world that's why I do Agile".

The duty of a Codewright is to understand the pros and cons of the tools and techniques available to him and choose the right one for the job at hand. To do otherwise is to blindly follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before us. The sense of security we may get from knowing that our trail-blazers made it to the end of the road and so will we, won't help us when we realize that they took the hardest and longest route over the mountain instead of going around it and we've just signed up for the same thing.