The manifesto, a thing of beauty.

While deeply attractive in the software world, and increasingly popular, they have a dark side.

Firstly, they are expressed in terms of values, with the intent of creating shared values. This is socially difficult, and is a sideways attempt to improve the developer, as a person. This is moralising. Can the moral nature of a developer really be improved, or only their actions? I stand with the latter.

The second issue is that, by their nature they cannot change, or have no easy mechanism for change. This is most easily expressed in programmer terminology as 'where can I put in a pull request?'.

This inevitably leads to ossification of thought at the moment the manifesto was written, no good for anyone. With that, they become the focus of dogmatic position taking. Witness the agile manifesto, now almost religiously held in adoration. It can be invoked as a higher power. This is deeply unhealthy, it strips us of the ability to change ideas and positions as needed, and guides us to focus on who we identify ourselves as, rather than what we do.

#MANIFESTNO