In my humble opinion aka IMHO is a phrase you hear quite often in technical discussions found on blogs or twitter. It’s nothing new and doesn’t need further explanation, since you’ve used it probably a thousand times, just like me. However, I’d like to talk about the small, but quite important difference between opinion and fact.
I think (notice, how I didn’t use IMHO here) that in most cases, especially when using IMHO in a face to face discussion, the word opinion actually could be replaced with fact, truth or verity.
I have noticed this for a while and came to the conclusion that the iOS developer community is worse in this regard than the Java community. I’m not too sure why. I assume it’s due to the fact that most of the iOS developers are working on their own, whereas the typical Java developer usually works in a team. I guess you tend to confuse opinion with fact much easier, if you are the only one involved in a project. Every decision you make caters to your own needs and is mostly a perfect fit.
A couple of years ago I read a blog post from Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror, which has been my mantra in terms of voicing my opinion ever since:
I suppose it’s also an issue of personal style. To me, writing without a strong voice, writing filled with second guessing and disclaimers, is tedious and difficult to slog through. I go out of my way to write in a strong voice because it’s more effective. But whenever I post in a strong voice, it is also an implied invitation to a discussion, a discussion where I often change my opinion and invariably learn a great deal about the topic at hand. I believe in the principle of strong opinions, weakly held
I have been applying the principle of strong opinions, weakly held in almost every discussion I had or blog post I published.
My opinions are usually deduced from personal experience and observation, so I will try to defend them to a certain degree. However, I’m more than happy to reconsider my position, if there’s a valid argument against it.