hwayne/awesome-cold-showers

Awesome Cold Showers is a curated list of articles, papers, and videos that push back on overhyped ideas in software development and technology. The premise is simple: when the tech community gets very excited about a concept, it helps to have rigorously sourced reading material that examines the limitations, failure cases, or inconclusive evidence behind that enthusiasm. The list is not trying to dismiss any topic entirely, just to add balance. Each entry follows a consistent format. It names a piece of hype, a common confident claim you might encounter in conference talks or blog posts. It then describes the shower, which is what the linked resource actually shows. Finally, each entry notes caveats so you understand the limits of the counterargument too. The topics covered are wide-ranging. Entries address formal verification of software, microservices architecture, type systems, big data tools, Agile development methodology, blockchain, machine learning, test-driven development, open-source sustainability, and naming conventions in code. Some entries point to academic papers, some to benchmark studies, some to experienced practitioners writing up what went wrong in practice. For example, one entry covers a benchmark showing that a laptop running optimized single-threaded code consistently outperforms large distributed computing clusters on graph-processing tasks. Another points to literature reviews finding that research on static typing's effect on bug rates is inconclusive. Another covers eye-tracking studies on code identifier styles that produced unexpected results. The repository itself is a plain Markdown file with no code. It is maintained by its author, who reads every submission and makes judgment calls about what to include. The goal is to keep the list rigorous and respectful, not cynical.