I was fairly appalled when I read this "enterpirse" piece from Steve Jones - the fact that he's in charge of any project at all is pretty depressing. Not because he's actively opposed to dynamic languages - that's just a symptom. No, it's this kind of attitude:

This is the reason I am against dynamic languages and all of the fan-boy parts of IT. IT is no-longer a hackers paradise populated only by people with a background in Computer Science, it is a discipline for the masses and as such the IT technologies and standards that we adopt should recognise that stopping the majority doing something stupid is the goal, because the smart guys can always cope.

If you are willing to put up with bad developers and poor practices, I guess you'll come out the other end believing this sort of thing. In Jones' world, the best you can do is fight against the mediocrity. Gosh forbid you do any selective hiring, or train the staff you have - or even hold them to high expectations. No, better to expect nothing and get nothing.

That thinking combines pretty well with this NY Times piece I read yesterday - on why Enterprise applications tend to be hard to use. I'll go so far as to say that they'll keep being hard to use until the kind of thinking illustrated by Jones leaves IT.

Hat tip to Patrick Logan, who led me to the Jones post and to this one from Steve Vinoski.