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The kind of people that come up with this stuff usually are in fact really good at visualising an abstract problem and implementing it in code. What they often

The kind of people that come up with this stuff usually are in fact really good at visualising an abstract problem and implementing it in code. What they often lack is the capacity to translate what it is their frameworks do to language others can understand. From what I have witnessed myself, these guys are actually quite intelligent in an abstract almost mathematical way — that is, they are not dumb and can come across as geniuses — but their mediocre communication skills prevent colleagues from actually understanding their work, and more importantly, prevent themselves from ever realizing that what they are doing is way too experimental and (not rarely) wildly inappropriate for the task at hand. You will hear these visionaries extol the virtues of their revolutionary framework time and time again, and that it will be the foundation of anything the company builds for years to come, but any criticism or even critical questions are dismissed with an air of 'you-just-don't-get-it-yet'. In the end either you leave for greener pastures, or the idiot savant cracks under the pressure of changing business needs that cannot be met by the big framework that only he/she (usually he) really 'gets' and quits.

mgkimsal 10y ago
Worked at a place where there was a 'genius' (knew him before I worked there - not a dumb guy, really) who had written some really .. bizarre AOP-style stuff in PHP4. Not AOP extensions, just... a whole lot of stuff trying to approximate AOP, but no one knew the term AOP or what it was good for. (aside: it was interesting intellectually to walk through, but was not anything that should have been used for production code. also, he didn't label himself a genius, but did have a somewhat overinflated view of how good his code was). Anyway, he was rarely in meetings, but a couple of folks who glommed on to him early on would extol the virtues of his 'framework'. "You know how some people are just so smart that they can't even explain their work, cause it's so beyond everyone's ability to understand it? That's who he is, and that's what we have!" This was said to me at least once, and repeated variations of it in a couple other meetings. And it was said with pride/admiration/awe, about how awesome it was. I countered with "if you can't understand it, and he can't explain it, he's the only one who can do anything with it, and you can't really verify if it's doing what you want/need, so how is this remotely 'good' by any metric you use for any other software in this department?" "You just don't understand how amazing this is, and what we're able to do with it" was the response. I distanced myself from it, but was then tasked with having to build on top of the 'web framework'. And discovered it had no support for web sessions. Or security. Or database connectivity. It was literally just mapping an incoming web request to a file, while taking a logging token from a cookie and sending it to a third server for logging activity. Given the AOP-esque nature... I had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out just where I'd actually add any sort of session management, and when I asked for someone (original author maybe?) to add this in because I couldn't figure out how to do it, but needed it, I was 'aggressive' and 'not a team player'. Ugh... EDIT: when I read dailywtf stuff, I sometimes doubt the dramatizations, then I remember back to my days on this project, and ... have to recognize there's probably very little embellishment.

mgkimsal 10y ago

Worked at a place where there was a 'genius' (knew him before I worked there - not a dumb guy, really) who had written some really .. bizarre AOP-style stuff in PHP4. Not AOP extensions, just... a whole lot of stuff trying to approximate AOP, but no one knew the term AOP or what it was good for. (aside: it was interesting intellectually to walk through, but was not anything that should have been used for production code. also, he didn't label himself a genius, but did have a somewhat overinflated view of how good his code was). Anyway, he was rarely in meetings, but a couple of folks who glommed on to him early on would extol the virtues of his 'framework'. "You know how some people are just so smart that they can't even explain their work, cause it's so beyond everyone's ability to understand it? That's who he is, and that's what we have!" This was said to me at least once, and repeated variations of it in a couple other meetings. And it was said with pride/admiration/awe, about how awesome it was. I countered with "if you can't understand it, and he can't explain it, he's the only one who can do anything with it, and you can't really verify if it's doing what you want/need, so how is this remotely 'good' by any metric you use for any other software in this department?" "You just don't understand how amazing this is, and what we're able to do with it" was the response. I distanced myself from it, but was then tasked with having to build on top of the 'web framework'. And discovered it had no support for web sessions. Or security. Or database connectivity. It was literally just mapping an incoming web request to a file, while taking a logging token from a cookie and sending it to a third server for logging activity. Given the AOP-esque nature... I had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out just where I'd actually add any sort of session management, and when I asked for someone (original author maybe?) to add this in because I couldn't figure out how to do it, but needed it, I was 'aggressive' and 'not a team player'. Ugh... EDIT: when I read dailywtf stuff, I sometimes doubt the dramatizations, then I remember back to my days on this project, and ... have to recognize there's probably very little embellishment.