---
title: "How not to compare \"body of knowledge\""
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2008/2/26/how-not-to-compare-quotbody-of-knowledgequot.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2008/2/26/how-not-to-compare-quotbody-of-knowledgequot.html"
published: "2008-02-26T19:09:14"
updated: "2008-02-26T19:09:14"
tags: ["General Software Devel..."]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "If you are faced with two technologies, ideas, or frameworks - how do you compare which has a wider body of knowledge? Specifically - can you tell if X does NOT have a wide body of knowledge? Here's something I think…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# How not to compare "body of knowledge"

By Roy Osherove February 26, 2008 In [General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

**Historical article** · Originally published February 26, 2008; technical details may be outdated.

If you are faced with two technologies, ideas, or frameworks - how do you compare which has a wider body of knowledge? Specifically - can you tell if X does NOT have a wide body of knowledge?

Here's something I think will NOT work for this: Google fight.

Example: [Dataset Vs. ORM](http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=dataset&word2=ORM)

Do the results mean that datasets have a wider body of knowledge?  not really. they (probably) show that more people posted about problems they were having getting datasets to work.

Maybe it means "wider body of problems"?

maybe not. For example: [NUnit vs. JUnit](http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=nunit&word2=junit). JUnit clearly wins, and I am pretty sure it's not because it has more problems but because it has been around longer. so it MIGHT hold true that there is a wide body of knowledge there. but with NUnit having over 1 million results, can't it be said that they BOTH have a wide body of knowledge?

so how **do** you decide if something has a body of knowledge and is worth pursuing?

## More in General Software Devel...

[All posts in General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

- Feb 27, 2008

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- Feb 27, 2008

    ### [My top 21 Most Viewed Blog posts](https://osherove.com/blog/2008/2/27/my-top-21-most-viewed-blog-posts.html)

- Feb 26, 2008

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- Feb 24, 2008

    ### [Project White and a cool debugging tip](https://osherove.com/blog/2008/2/24/project-white-and-a-cool-debugging-tip.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/