Let me coin a phrase

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There are a lot of phrases and acronyms.
Every developer should at least know 10. So let’s try it:

  1. TDD

  2. BDD

  3. DDD

  4. MDA

  5. OOP

  6. FP

  7. FaaS

  8. SaaS

  9. PaaS

  10. SOAP

Yep, this is 10, even somehow sorted.

Today I thought I will also provide an acronym, a new one, and being a complete developer I will also deliver a well-fitting phrase for it.

It does not exist so far, not in this list of 136 acronyms nor in this list of 185 acronyms.

I have already used the one I introduce now once or twice in conversations, so I thought I would document this now; not every day I have the chance to coin a phrase.

OBP: Opinion-based programming

So what is OBP, or, opinion-based programming

Well, I think it is best to demonstrate this by showing the real OBP way and compare it with a less traditional non-OBP way.

OBP: Look at the code, I have that many unit tests, and they all pass. My app is well tested!
Non-OBP: Look at the code coverage created from running the unit tests, they execute only about 40% of the code.

OBP: Look at the code, I have hand tuned each line of this code, ok it is hard to read, but it is the fastest way to implement it!
Non-OBP: Measurement shows no improvement and profiling shows that this piece of code is irrelevant for optimization.

OBP: This is the only way to do it! How else would you solve this problem
Non-OBP: Let’s take a step back and rephrase the problem and see if we ask the right questions.

Well, I think you get the point, you already know and understand OBP.

The OBP movement

I think everyone is, or has at least been, at least sometimes, part of the opinion-based programming movement. It is hard to not be attracted by it. From time to time I find myself following the promises of OBP and sometimes it is not that easy to not follow its promises.

Do you have any OBP examples? If so, please add them to the comment section below.