> Note that the metaphor in cargo-cult programming is the opposite of the metaphor in cargo-cult science: Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. Moreover, both metaphors differ from the cargo-cult metaphor in other contexts, referring to the expectation of receiving valuables without working.
So there's some justification that the meaning has escaped the metaphor and has become meaningless.
Also, it's quite ironic that arguably the term "virtue signaling" has itself become a lazy, meaningless attack- a cargo cult, in other words. Claims of virtue signaling - both as a rhetorical activity, and as an insult devised to shut down discourse- are both cargo cults.
> (...) Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood.
Cargo-cult science does not work because by "work" it would need to involve causality, which it doesn't.
This is not the same as the cargo-cult mentality referred to in tech circles. That refers only to the belief that the performative aspect correlated to an expected outcome is actually the cause, whereas it's at best a correlation. People build landing strips expecting cargo planes to drop off riches. People use a specific project tree layout expecting the project to work. People use a programming language expecting their code to be memory safe and vulnerability-free. People use a container orchestration service expecting their system to be highly scalable and resilient. People use a framework expecting their system to be high performance and efficient.
You'll see claims that "this app runs on Kubernetes, thus is very resilient and highly scalable". Cargo cult mentality.
Do you understand why the "lazy, meaningless attack" remark makes absolutely no sense when actually considering the concept?
There is no justification. There's only a straw man based on, at best, a gross failure to understand the very basis of concept that's being criticized.
The problem is that there is nothing being corrected at all. There's only a poorly framed and distorted interpretation of the coloquial use of an expression, which is then exaggerated to serve as a basis for virtue signaling.
The blogger goes to the extent of trying to dismiss any argument that ever refers to the concept as "simply a lazy, meaningless attack". As if anyone who refers to a specific concept is automatically wrong by means of commiting a foul in a virtue signaling game.