This is definitely subjective, but I’d like to try to avoid it becoming argumentative. I think it could be an interesting question if people treat it appropriately.
The idea for this question came from the comment thread from my answer to the “What are five things you hate about your favorite language?” question. I contended that classes in C# should be sealed by default – I won’t put my reasoning in the question, but I might write a fuller explanation as an answer to this question. I was surprised at the heat of the discussion in the comments (25 comments currently).
So, what contentious opinions do you hold? I’d rather avoid the kind of thing which ends up being pretty religious with relatively little basis (e.g. brace placing) but examples might include things like “unit testing isn’t actually terribly helpful” or “public fields are okay really”. The important thing (to me, anyway) is that you’ve got reasons behind your opinions.
Please present your opinion and reasoning – I would encourage people to vote for opinions which are well-argued and interesting, whether or not you happen to agree with them.
407 Answers
Programmers who don’t code in their spare time for fun will never become as good as those that do.
I think even the smartest and most talented people will never become truly good programmers unless they treat it as more than a job. Meaning that they do little projects on the side, or just mess with lots of different languages and ideas in their spare time.
(Note: I’m not saying good programmers do nothing else than programming, but they do more than program from 9 to 5)