The statement that stands out most to me: "the group of people with a little bit of knowledge (likely due to ad hoc experimentation and intuition based on prev

The statement that stands out most to me: "the group of people with a little bit of knowledge (likely due to ad hoc experimentation and intuition based on previous familiarity with another programming language or Unix culture or just copy and paste osmosis from a barely-working heap of sticks left by the previous maintainer) dwarfs that smaller group of experienced programmers." I think one of the reasons there are a bunch of people with just a "little bit of knowledge" is that there are a bunch of gigs where that's enough. I also think that its a tremendous mistake for people to take these types of jobs if they have any personal ambitions to reach that "experienced programmer" level. Unless your personal situation dictates that you have to. But, the trick is that the ad-hoc experimentation and intuition is a necessary first step to moving to the next level. I'm personally interested in figuring out what you need to really grok in a particular programming paradigm/language to be a really great hacker using that paradigm/language.