somebody who can talk for hours about versions, tool "release cycles" and integration of one product with another, but hasn't used the product in question for a long time.
somebody that has read about a particular product and thinks they understand it on a conceptual level (They might be right...)
a "wizard jockey" that has mastered the fine art of box filling and button clicking but doesn't really understand the code that they've generated.
a technology fashion victim.
somebody who waxes lyrical about some project using advanced technology. Five minutes later you realise that you've worked on this project and that most of the effort went into working around what he/she is now describing as a silver bullet.
Tests
A simple test: "Yes, thanks for that. Have you tried it?... Yes, but in a real project?"
It saddens me when you go to a technical forum where developers are asked to raise questions about what's important to them and the only topics that people volunteer for discussion are "new features of product X". Maybe people just don't like airing their code/designs in public?
-- OliBye or maybe they prefer to do it anonymously (Like you ;-)
Some tool danger signs I've seen recently:
"Shields developers from the complexity of J2EE..." [...and drives them nuts when they don't like what it has decided to do.]
"The model is saved in XML. There is no DTD - the spec is held in the import/export code of <insert tool name here>" [ Sort of like the MS-Word? file format then... but without the compactness of a binary format.]
"This tool implements 21 different wizards." [ But does it give us any control over the tasks that are done? ]
"The <editorname> provides shortcuts to aid with developers cutting and pasting code." [ Instead of boasting about how much crap the tool can generate, could I have some refactoring support please ? ]
"Implements all 8 UML diagram types." [I hope to God that it doesn't force me use them all.]
The above "features" will probably help to sell the tool. Unfortunately, all the "features" above seem to encourage the worst in people... I suspect that if you program Java the way the tool designers want you to do, it'd look like cobol. (i.e. They seem to want to support repetitive, stupid coding, rather than enabling developers to clean it up.) Thinking about it, my main concern about these "features" is the way they conspire to take control away from developers.
ToolMania