The Duct Tape Programmer
It's nice to see Spolsky get this enthusiastic about something other than his marketing, and I'm sure Peter Seibel agrees. But he negates his entire point at the end. After going on about how great duct tape programmers are, he says, don't think that means <i>you</i> can be one, because they're magic. (He says "pretty", but in this case pretty means magic.) To wit:<p><i>Duct tape programmers have to have a lot of talent to pull off this shtick.</i><p>In other words what matters is talent, not duct tape. Untalented duct tape programmers do as much damage as the untalented design-pattern programmers he scourges. So what was the point again?