Imagine that ...
... you're at the doctor's because you don't feel well - there's something wrong with your health and you need professional help of a medical expert. You sit in front of him, but before you have any chance to describe your problems the interlocutor opens with lengthy praise of value and importance of ... enema. He claims to be a declared fan, who dry-practices enema in his free time, spends time on exploring new applications of enema out of its "core usage". He calls himself an enema artificer (it's even on his business card). Finally, he asks when was the last time you had an enema. You look at your aching ankle and can't help feeling a bit awkward ...
Imagine that ...
... you're looking for a way to improve your Spanish. You've learned some basics in secondary school, but it never went beyond basic grammar & minimal vocabulary. You're paying a visit to the local Spanish school to enquire about their methods (what classes look like, what they focus on, etc.). The answer (provided promptly and with a broad smile) is a bit surprising. The school's modus operandi is all around the ... adjectives. The Head of Teaching Staff is a self-declared adjective aficionado as (according to him) adjectives enrich descriptions and you can add more than one adjective to a noun to make it more expressive. He claims that one well-aimed adjective can stand for the whole sentence, so the school has created its own custom handbook titled "Adjetivos" which presents how you can effectively communicate with the kinfolk of Cervantes & Picasso using adjectives only. Yikes.
Imagine that all your car mechanic cares is his spark plug pliers ...
Imagine that the striker of your favourite football team declares he'll only go for overhead scissors kicks during each game ...
Imagine that the chef in your favourite restaurant is planning to earn his Michelin star by mastering the art of using a colander ...
That's basically what I feel when I encounter yet another Event Sourcing-crazed software engineer (they walk in flocks these days).
I think we'd do much better as an industry with more engineers fixated on some more crucial, yet usually neglected topics (instead of being a one trick pony ...). E.g.: development agility (no, it doesn't have anything in common with Scrum), living documentation, taming inherent complexity, practical hypothesis validation - e.g. A/B testing, business activity monitoring & customer analytics, value stream mapping or (at last, but not least) technical leadership.
