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Grady Booch in damage control mode

December 16, 2005 02:02:55 +0200 (EET)

Grady Booch has swung into full damage control mode, with the main force of the attack directed against our CEO, Juha-Pekka Tolvanen. Back in October, Booch said on an OOPSLA panel that he typically throws models away, but never throws source code away. Juha-Pekka quoted him on that, and his quote was picked up by Microsoft's Harry Pierson and Steve Cook.

Now Booch has written in his blog, and commented in Juha-Pekka's and Steve Cook's blogs, accusing Juha-Pekka of misquoting him:
Sigh.
It's sad how one can be misquoted and then for that misquote to be picked up by someone else with both then making a spin of the events to support their position. How silly is that.

Let me just state for the record that Juha-Pekka is one of the nicest guys around, and would never purposely misquote someone. We're all only human though, so let's see if anybody else was in the panel and recorded what Grady said. As it happens, there are at least three: here they are, with their versions of Booch's words:

Ivan Moore: "I often throw models away but tend not to throw away the source code"

Brian Foote: There was something decidedly devolutionary in Grady Booch's overdue exhortation to cast models aside

Erik Rose: "I typically throw my models away, but I always save my source code"

So it looks like Grady has his work cut out now, having to go round so many people to tell them they've misquoted him... ;-)

I have no problem with Grady explaining more clearly what he meant, and indeed later in the panel he said he only throws some of the models away. But I do have a problem with unfounded accusations of misquoting. Let's hope Grady is as quick to admit he was wrong about being misquoted, as he was to admit he didn't really throw all his models away. Even if we disagree on technical matters, we can still be polite and accurate - whatever our guru status.