That was my first impression too, but I wonder if we're being a little bit too uncharitable. Retrospectives like this have value, even if it's mostly just for the person doing the retrospective.
Also, most of these mistakes are pretty broad, philosophical statements. It can take a while to discover that you're on the wrong track with something like this. I'm guessing that if he keeps at it for another 15 or 20 years, he'll do another 2-3 complete reversals on each of these positions as he realizes the world is a lot more complicated than it seems at first. I know I have, and I've only been at it for 5 years.
One thing that struck me: his career seems totally optimized for the "custom business app, database-backed CRUDscreen" programmer. Which IMHO is a pretty boring subfield to optimize for, but different strokes for different folks. I think his perspective would be a lot broader if he did heavy algorithmics (a la Google or finance) or startups, though.
One thing that struck me: his career seems totally optimized for the "custom business app, database-backed CRUDscreen" programmer.
I think that's the problem. ORM and generics are very specific things to me, not something I'd see as a long-term lesson to keep in mind. His programming experience seems very .NET/Visual Studio-centric. Programming in other paradigms might make his point about eg. unit tests more mitigated.
Also, most of these mistakes are pretty broad, philosophical statements. It can take a while to discover that you're on the wrong track with something like this. I'm guessing that if he keeps at it for another 15 or 20 years, he'll do another 2-3 complete reversals on each of these positions as he realizes the world is a lot more complicated than it seems at first. I know I have, and I've only been at it for 5 years.
One thing that struck me: his career seems totally optimized for the "custom business app, database-backed CRUDscreen" programmer. Which IMHO is a pretty boring subfield to optimize for, but different strokes for different folks. I think his perspective would be a lot broader if he did heavy algorithmics (a la Google or finance) or startups, though.