You Say "Cargo Cult" like it's a BAD thing!

"Cargo cult" programming is evil only if it's a lifetime pattern. As a part of larval stage, it's entirely normal. Human beings learn, in part, by imitating what they don't understand ... yet.

For further information, see any human child.

-- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos

Comment on You Say "Cargo Cult" like it's a BAD thing!

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(tye)Re: You Say "Cargo Cult" like it's a BAD thing! by tye (Sage) on Nov 14, 2001 at 03:45 UTC
I've come to hate the term "cargo cult" myself. Many people copied that constructor code from standard documentation. I thought such copying was more accurately called "best practices". - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")	[reply]
Re: You Say "Cargo Cult" like it's a BAD thing! by dws (Chancellor) on Nov 14, 2001 at 00:56 UTC
"Cargo cult" programming is evil only if it's a lifetime pattern. As a part of larval stage, it's entirely normal. Many of the complaints that I see merlyn and other making against Cargo Cult programming are in the context of production code. Granted, we're all larva at some point, but on my projects, I try to avoid letting larva write production code. That may sound snotty, but a lot of what we do here is try to get people past the larval stage by pointing out what's bad about what they're going, and pointing out what they could do right.	[reply]


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