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I can see how this article might be comforting for some, but "bad coders" is still a problem. There are a lot of amateurs in this industry (even ones with years

I can see how this article might be comforting for some, but "bad coders" is still a problem. There are a lot of amateurs in this industry (even ones with years of "experience"). You can create an extremely opinionated language which doesn't give any freedom for creativity, solutions and expression, and devs will still find a way to duck everything up. IMHO, OP saw a problem but didn't arrive to the right solution.

_bxg1 8y ago
The two factors are equally important; it's just that in certain circles, tooling and language assistance are undervalued and already-good programmers are told to "just get good".
xiphias2 8y ago
It's good to have bad coders. Not everybody can have an exceptional IQ. Not everybody can be good, but everybody deserves a chance to be a coder. There are real problems that can be solved by a bad coder as well, that may help your life some day. Great coders are needed for large, scalable, hard problems, but there are little things they don't have time to work on.
- rinchik 8y ago
  It is NOT good to have bad coders, it's good to have a promising talent. Also when can we finally drop this IQ thing? Your IQ does not guarantee you anything. Attention to details, perseverance, curiosity are the great promising qualities, not your IQ.
  - tormeh 8y ago
    Coding is essentially a series of IQ tests. Seeing patterns easily, having lots of working memory... You're not going to be good without it. Life is unfair, and some get this given to them, and some don't. To be fair that probably partly applies to the qualities you listed as well. So it's true, IQ is not a promising quality, it's a requirement.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      Is there any proof of developers having higher average IQ than other career paths or are we just assuming that because we're developers we're naturally more intelligent (with a dash of dunning-kruger for flavor).
      - rurp 8y ago
        I don't think the parent comment is saying that developers have a higher IQ than all other professions, just that developers are smarter than average. I personally think that there is a huge range but would bet that the average programmer has a higher IQ than the average non-progammer. Of course, the same could probably be said for a number of professions.
      - gcommer 8y ago
        Google for "occupation iq" readily finds many surveys of different occupations with a fairly expected correlation: Professors and scientists on the high end of the spectrum and laborers on the other. Software engineers/CS isn't at the top but tends to rank fairly highly. However, narrowing these stats to a single person as meaning "if you have a low IQ you can't be a good engineer" is incorrect, as that is totally throwing out: 1) IQ being only a single of many factors (reading about this from people in the field, I often hear IQ cited as the best single predictor we have, but still only accounting for ~30%) 2) IQ can change 3) IQ doesn't include domain knowledge, determination, or any other factors particular to a specific occupation.
      - gowld 8y ago
        You don't have to be dumb to stock groceries or be a line cook, but you don't have to be very smart either, and if you are smart you won't get a lot of intellectual challenge from work.
      - mcphage 8y ago
        > Is there any proof of developers having higher average IQ than other career paths or are we just assuming that because we're developers we're naturally more intelligent I don't think the poster is claiming that programmers are smarter; they're claiming that what IQ tests evaluate, and what programmers do, are similar. But IQ isn't the be-all and end-all of intelligence. If you're a programmer, you might score high on an IQ test, not because of how smart you are, but because the skills being evaluated align. You might not be very intelligent at all, just good at IQ tests.
Rusky 8y ago
I don't see how the article is trying to be "comforting," or dismissing the value of skill and education. I also don't see how the `Send` trait featured in the article "doesn't give any freedom for creativity." I read it as claiming that skill and education are insufficient to prevent these bugs, and that automation is still valuable no matter how skilled the programmer is.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  In a broad sense, the forces of safety and flexibility in a language tend to be at odds. Rust does a lot of clever things that push that curve some, but a big part of what makes it safer than C++ is what you can't do.
  - Rusky 8y ago
    Sure, I certainly agree there. I just thought the OP was going a bit overboard- stifled creativity wasn't an issue here at all.
  - xiphias2 8y ago
    I refuse to acknowledge that C++ is clearly more flexible than Rust. My favourite counterexample is Rayon. Even if you are able to implement something similar in C++ (I tried it), the job of the C++ compiler with understanding when it can inline functions without overhead gets so hard (vs the Rust compiler), that it becomes inpractical. Generally this has been my experience with higher order programming in C++ actually.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    Rust is actually looser than C++ in some respects. For example, there are no type-based aliasing rules to worry about in Rust. This makes writing "type punning" style code less of a headache for me, personally.
leesec 8y ago
Another take is that DESPITE there being a lot of 'amateurs' in the industry, the world generally seems to be humming along as normal, if not doing very well.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  > Another take is that DESPITE there being a lot of 'amateurs' in the industry, the world generally seems to be humming along as normal, if not doing very well. Given that the count of software security incidents and data breaches are skyrocketing by all measures (e.g. https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/ https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/), that's not remotely a reasonable view to take.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Data breaches are rarely correlated with amateur developers in my opinion. Breaches occur when a company makes financial decisions that it is cheaper for them to deal with the potential fallout of a leak than to prevent it in the first place. More skilled labor won't solve this problem because it's fundamentally an issue of management and cost-saving measures.

_bxg1 8y ago

The two factors are equally important; it's just that in certain circles, tooling and language assistance are undervalued and already-good programmers are told to "just get good".

xiphias2 8y ago

It's good to have bad coders. Not everybody can have an exceptional IQ. Not everybody can be good, but everybody deserves a chance to be a coder. There are real problems that can be solved by a bad coder as well, that may help your life some day. Great coders are needed for large, scalable, hard problems, but there are little things they don't have time to work on.

rinchik 8y ago
It is NOT good to have bad coders, it's good to have a promising talent. Also when can we finally drop this IQ thing? Your IQ does not guarantee you anything. Attention to details, perseverance, curiosity are the great promising qualities, not your IQ.
- tormeh 8y ago
  Coding is essentially a series of IQ tests. Seeing patterns easily, having lots of working memory... You're not going to be good without it. Life is unfair, and some get this given to them, and some don't. To be fair that probably partly applies to the qualities you listed as well. So it's true, IQ is not a promising quality, it's a requirement.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Is there any proof of developers having higher average IQ than other career paths or are we just assuming that because we're developers we're naturally more intelligent (with a dash of dunning-kruger for flavor).
    - rurp 8y ago
      I don't think the parent comment is saying that developers have a higher IQ than all other professions, just that developers are smarter than average. I personally think that there is a huge range but would bet that the average programmer has a higher IQ than the average non-progammer. Of course, the same could probably be said for a number of professions.
    - gcommer 8y ago
      Google for "occupation iq" readily finds many surveys of different occupations with a fairly expected correlation: Professors and scientists on the high end of the spectrum and laborers on the other. Software engineers/CS isn't at the top but tends to rank fairly highly. However, narrowing these stats to a single person as meaning "if you have a low IQ you can't be a good engineer" is incorrect, as that is totally throwing out: 1) IQ being only a single of many factors (reading about this from people in the field, I often hear IQ cited as the best single predictor we have, but still only accounting for ~30%) 2) IQ can change 3) IQ doesn't include domain knowledge, determination, or any other factors particular to a specific occupation.
    - gowld 8y ago
      You don't have to be dumb to stock groceries or be a line cook, but you don't have to be very smart either, and if you are smart you won't get a lot of intellectual challenge from work.
    - mcphage 8y ago
      > Is there any proof of developers having higher average IQ than other career paths or are we just assuming that because we're developers we're naturally more intelligent I don't think the poster is claiming that programmers are smarter; they're claiming that what IQ tests evaluate, and what programmers do, are similar. But IQ isn't the be-all and end-all of intelligence. If you're a programmer, you might score high on an IQ test, not because of how smart you are, but because the skills being evaluated align. You might not be very intelligent at all, just good at IQ tests.

Rusky 8y ago

I don't see how the article is trying to be "comforting," or dismissing the value of skill and education. I also don't see how the `Send` trait featured in the article "doesn't give any freedom for creativity." I read it as claiming that skill and education are insufficient to prevent these bugs, and that automation is still valuable no matter how skilled the programmer is.

_bxg1 8y ago
In a broad sense, the forces of safety and flexibility in a language tend to be at odds. Rust does a lot of clever things that push that curve some, but a big part of what makes it safer than C++ is what you can't do.
- Rusky 8y ago
  Sure, I certainly agree there. I just thought the OP was going a bit overboard- stifled creativity wasn't an issue here at all.
- xiphias2 8y ago
  I refuse to acknowledge that C++ is clearly more flexible than Rust. My favourite counterexample is Rayon. Even if you are able to implement something similar in C++ (I tried it), the job of the C++ compiler with understanding when it can inline functions without overhead gets so hard (vs the Rust compiler), that it becomes inpractical. Generally this has been my experience with higher order programming in C++ actually.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  Rust is actually looser than C++ in some respects. For example, there are no type-based aliasing rules to worry about in Rust. This makes writing "type punning" style code less of a headache for me, personally.

leesec 8y ago

Another take is that DESPITE there being a lot of 'amateurs' in the industry, the world generally seems to be humming along as normal, if not doing very well.

ThrowawayR2 8y ago
> Another take is that DESPITE there being a lot of 'amateurs' in the industry, the world generally seems to be humming along as normal, if not doing very well. Given that the count of software security incidents and data breaches are skyrocketing by all measures (e.g. https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/ https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/), that's not remotely a reasonable view to take.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Data breaches are rarely correlated with amateur developers in my opinion. Breaches occur when a company makes financial decisions that it is cheaper for them to deal with the potential fallout of a leak than to prevent it in the first place. More skilled labor won't solve this problem because it's fundamentally an issue of management and cost-saving measures.