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I've read this narrative that only the programmer cares about the quality of the work many times. I find, however, that sometimes the programmer cares more abou

by tensor 8y ago

I've read this narrative that only the programmer cares about the quality of the work many times. I find, however, that sometimes the programmer cares more about showing off how clever they are then building a quality and simple system that is delivered in a reasonable time frame. Hacker News has this narrative that programmers are always right and always smarter than "management" or any other non-programmer. That's not reality though. Programming isn't some special discipline where everyone is great. There are a lot of poor programmers out there like I describe above. Management often ends up not believing people because of this, just like in other professions. Developers need to share the responsibility of the situation, it's not all just "bad managers". Developers need to start caring more about the people they build products for rather then simply their wallet and personal "fun".

Raphmedia 8y ago
Of course this is but an anecdote from my point of view based on the workplaces that I experienced. What I've lived through a lot of time is teams of senior programmers led by junior managers. Sometimes they are fresh out of school and have never led any team. Heck, sometimes senior programmers turn into code monkeys because they are hired as nothing more than glorified trophies. IT teams having to answer directly to sales department managers, etc. Teams of juniors or intermediates are way more likely to make mistakes such as the one you describe. I've seen my share and I do agree that they exist. People migrating entire projects to the language-du-jour and creating a bad situation for everyone because they didn't master that language and ended up refactoring stable solutions into shaky messes. In a perfect world, we would have a team of strong senior programmers leading a few juniors under a strong management team.

by tensor 8y ago

Raphmedia 8y ago

Of course this is but an anecdote from my point of view based on the workplaces that I experienced. What I've lived through a lot of time is teams of senior programmers led by junior managers. Sometimes they are fresh out of school and have never led any team. Heck, sometimes senior programmers turn into code monkeys because they are hired as nothing more than glorified trophies. IT teams having to answer directly to sales department managers, etc. Teams of juniors or intermediates are way more likely to make mistakes such as the one you describe. I've seen my share and I do agree that they exist. People migrating entire projects to the language-du-jour and creating a bad situation for everyone because they didn't master that language and ended up refactoring stable solutions into shaky messes. In a perfect world, we would have a team of strong senior programmers leading a few juniors under a strong management team.