I recently did an interview with local DC dev community Hatchpad about the dangers of blindly applying patterns, and how not-helpful the SOLID principles are.

One thing mentioned that isn’t in the SOLID book is that we all need to understand not just the advice we’re given, but who is giving it. What is the actual experience of the person telling us how we should code?

If someone is giving out advice I want to know – “Have you done that? Have you experienced this problem, or is it just theoretical?”

I try very hard to only give advice based on my actual experience, and I try to contexutalize that experience as much as I can to avoid it being mis-applied. It’s not easy and I don’t always do a great job, but I’m very aware of it. Even if my advice boils down to “it worked for me, anyway”, that’s better than “I haven’t tried it, but it seems neat”.