Those "Effective $Language" books make arguments for their advice, which you are free to find compelling, or not. Back when I first read Effective Java, maybe about a decade ago, I thought it was over-complicated hogwash that I knew better than. When I read it again starting about a year ago, I found the arguments for most of its advice very compelling, based on problems I've run into time and again in my own, and other people's, code, and not just in Java. YMMV I suppose!
The backlash against "engineered" software definitely seems real, and I think that's great - questioning assumptions is critical - but I think a lot of the insinuations about peoples' motivations and talents are unnecessary and honestly kind of silly. Most of us are just trying to find ways to avoid issues we've seen become problems in other projects in the past, it's not some nefarious conspiracy against simple code.
The backlash against "engineered" software definitely seems real, and I think that's great - questioning assumptions is critical - but I think a lot of the insinuations about peoples' motivations and talents are unnecessary and honestly kind of silly. Most of us are just trying to find ways to avoid issues we've seen become problems in other projects in the past, it's not some nefarious conspiracy against simple code.