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The nuance of calling people names is lost on the author. Bad code can be written by great coders. It happens to the best of us. No need to insult people to
by xutopia 10y ago
The nuance of calling people names is lost on the author. Bad code can be written by great coders. It happens to the best of us. No need to insult people to improve code.
- markwaldron 10y agoI second this. There are plenty of times I'll be looking at code I wrote a few months ago and swear it was written by someone else. The same goes for more elegant code. Not everyone writes amazing code all the time.
- attractivechaos 10y agoI second, too. Also: > More generally, though, it shows why there's a difference between 1x and 10x programmers. While I agree that some of the examples are impropriate, I think OP has generalized the issue too far. I don't believe knowing how to use assert properly has much contribution to productivity in programming.
- imron 10y ago> I don't believe knowing how to use assert properly has much contribution to productivity in programming. It's a symptom of the problem, not the cause. It demonstrates that they don't really understand the code they are writing, and it's that attitude and approach to programming that has a contribution to productivity.
- attractivechaos 10y agoThis comes back to xutopia's comment. Almost every programmer has blind spots. It is often biased to judge the overall capability of a programmer just by looking at these minor spots. If a programmer is particularly good at breaking a complex problem down to manageable subtasks but knows little about assert, he/she could still be a 10x programmer. The thing is: it is easy to evaluate the proper use of assert, but it is much harder to evaluate the capability to solve complex real-world problems.
- CJefferson 10y agoThe programmer who wrote 3 out of the 4 complained about things invented bitcoin. Do you think they are productive enough?
- imron 10y ago> The programmer who wrote 3 out of the 4 complained about things invented bitcoin That doesn't make him a good programmer. In fact it's entirely possible to be a brilliant cryptographer but only an average programmer.
- GoToRO 10y agoDo you insult a red car when you call it "a red car"? do you insult a bad programmer when you call him "a bad programmer". It seems that you can't handle reality. Knowing where you are will help you progress. Believing that you are good while being bad has the only effect that you will not do anything to improve so you will stay bad. Is that what you want?
- tdb7893 10y agoHelping people become better is good but just insulting them needlessly is silly. The rest of the article is good and helpful because it goes into what they actually did wrong but calling them bad programmers is insulting and doesn't actually add any value to the article (I actually think that it takes away from the article somewhat because of the tone it creates).
- luckroy 10y ago"Red" is an objective attribute; "bad" is a subjective one. I agree that self-evaluation and recognition of inferior practices will help one progress, but the article would be more effective if the author was less condemning.
- dllthomas 10y agoBut if you call someone a bad programmer, odds are greater that they stop listening.