The Art of Criticizing Without Knowing: A Development Classic

The Paradox of the Critical Developer 🤔

In the development world, there exists a fascinating species: the professional critic developer. Their natural habitat? Technical discussions. Their specialty? Criticizing everything they don't understand. Their superpower? Having a strong opinion on technologies they've never used.

You'll easily recognize them by these typical phrases:

• "TypeScript? Pfff, JavaScript is more than enough!" (Has never written a line of TypeScript)
• "React is so over-engineered..." (Made their last project in jQuery)
• "Python is slow!" (Has never optimized their Java code)
• "NoSQL? A trend that will pass..." (Has been saying this since 2010)
• "Microservices architecture is really for hipsters" (Maintains a 200,000-line monolithic application)
• "Containers? Too complicated!" (Spends 3 hours per week configuring their environment)

The Coffee-Break Expert ☕

What makes this phenomenon particularly delightful is the unshakeable conviction with which these criticisms are delivered. It's as if simply reading a tweet about a technology automatically granted a doctorate in the subject.

Let's look at some typical scenes from a developer's life:

Scene 1: The Technical Meeting
---------------------------------
Dev A: "We could use Kubernetes to orchestrate our services."
Critic: "Another trendy thing! A good old server is enough!"
Dev B: "But... what about scalability? Resilience?"
Critic: "Back in my day, we did everything manually, and it worked!"

Scene 2: The Code Review
---------------------------------
Junior: "I used async/await to handle promises."
Critic: "Callbacks worked just fine! Why complicate things?"
Senior: "It improves readability and maintenance..."
Critic: "Pfff, more buzzwords!"

Levels of Unfounded Criticism 🎯

1. The Confident Beginner:

   • "Tests? My code works fine without them!"
   • "Git? I zip my folders, it's the same thing"
   • "Accessibility? Nobody uses that"

2. The Self-Proclaimed Expert:

   • Has read three blog posts about cloud computing
   • Compares all languages to the one they know
   • "Strong typing? A waste of time!"

3. The Technical Nostalgic:

   • "Modern frameworks have complicated everything"
   • "Web development was better before"
   • Refuses to use new language features

4. The Disaster Prophet:

   • Has been predicting the death of every technology for years
   • "The cloud? A passing trend!"
   • "AI will replace all developers" (since 1960)

Humility as an Antidote 🌱

True expertise isn't measured by the ability to criticize, but by the ability to understand. Here are some constructive suggestions:

1. Try Before Judging:

   • Test a technology in a real situation
   • Understand the context of use
   • Objectively evaluate advantages and disadvantages

2. Ask Questions:

   • "What problems does this approach solve?"
   • "What are the user experiences?"
   • "In what context do you use it?"

3. Acknowledge Limitations:

   • Recognize that you can't master everything
   • Be open to new approaches
   • Accept learning from others

4. Stay Curious:

   • Explore different technologies
   • Participate in various communities
   • Take interest in others' experiences

Conclusion: The Art of Learning Rather Than Criticizing 🎓

The next time you're tempted to criticize a technology or approach you don't master, remember the image from the beginning: nothing is more ironic than criticizing others' ignorance while exposing your own.

The true professional knows that development is constant learning. Every technology, framework, and methodology has its context and use cases. The humility to acknowledge that we don't know everything is often the first step toward enriching new discoveries.

After all, as the saying goes: "Criticism is easy, art is difficult". Especially when you master neither! 😉

PS: If you recognized yourself in this article, don't panic: we've all been there. The important thing is to laugh about it and evolve! And yes, even I have criticized technologies before understanding their true value...