5 ms·

This is such a bizarre post. If you have the self-awareness to admit this about yourself, you are probably not a poor programmer. Poor programmers do things l

This is such a bizarre post. If you have the self-awareness to admit this about yourself, you are probably not a poor programmer. Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. Most importantly - poor programmers do not learn from their mistakes and are unable to see that they are poor programmers.

RadiantSecurity 7y ago
> Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. All of these examples make sense in the context of your business, but in some environments these might be best practice ;)
- nwah1 7y ago
  There's different levels of concern for a public API and an internal interface. If you control all publishers and subscribers, then you don't need to worry quite as much about sanity checking inputs or making every possible workable input produce a valid result.
- foo101 7y ago
  > but in some environments these might be best practice What are those environments? Can you be more specific?
  - macintux 7y ago
    I don’t know what they had in mind, but certainly Erlang encourages those sorts of approaches.
  - RadiantSecurity 7y ago
    There are plenty of environments where deviating from spec (even when fixing an apparently trivial bug) would not be ok without assessing the situation for potential unintended behaviors. High-risk systems where a software bug could result in loss of life - aviation, submarine tech, defense, medical etc. Edit: This is for throwing exceptions on undefined behavior. For unlimited threads I imagine scenarios exist particularly when scalable computing is so popular. Large high traffic web stores such as Amazon/Ebay, financial institutions, etc. Either way, the problem shouldn't be solved by an individual developer on a project making things up as they go - its a problem that probably needs to be defined at a framework layer, and discussed within the team of developers and requirements definers.
Hermitian909 7y ago
Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? When I started programming seriously I had a mentor who gave me a long list of my shortcomings. It's taken years of hard, dedicated work to rectify most of those problems and I still have a huge distance to cover to be as good as I want to be. Being a good programmer is a skillet acquired with hard, concentrated effort over time; not just a good attitude with some self-awareness.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  It is somewhat semantics but there is a big distinction between being aware and unaware of your failings that has a real impact on your output.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  OP said "probably not" not "certainly not". Most people do not have a mentor to tell them everything they are doing wrong so they are probably not aware.
- disjhshava 7y ago
  In general, people tend to be overconfident in their beliefs and too slow to incorporate new information. There is experimental evidence to back this up (pdf warning: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publication/230726569_Knowing_with_certainty_the_appropriateness_of_extreme_confidence/links/00b4952b854b29281c000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publica...). I think this applies to engineers as well as anyone else.
- watwut 7y ago
  > Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? Being aware of what you are lacking allows you to improve on those things, work around those issues and accept when collegue is actually good at stuff you are not good at.
29athrowaway 7y ago
Awareness is one important part of self-improvement, but taking the initiative and doing something about it is another thing.
tjpnz 7y ago
A poor programmer wouldn't be on HN and the point about never learning anything new reinforces that. Most of the article reads like satire.
- drharby 7y ago
  That's a major assumption. Many get curious when a plumber or other blue collar worker talks on an hn thread. This isnt a secret clubhouse, its a new forum. Just...tech focused.
  - tjpnz 7y ago
    Getting to that thread regardless of the subject assumes some level of intellectual curiosity (however low that may be). That seems to be the thing lacking among all the worst devs I've had the misfortune of working with.
michannne 7y ago
I know many a poor programmer. The consistent thread between them is that they don't appreciate the fact that they don't know everything. You may be very well versed in a tech stack, but there are undoubtedly architectural implementations or design choices or algoritms which you simply don't know or haven't considered. A good programmer recognizes the situations where they cannot come up with the best solution and makes the necessary safety changes so that when the best solution does reveal itself, it's easy to swap out the old solution. Another trait is the belief that they either never need to touch their code after they write it, or worse, only they will ever touch their code. It fires me up to see code that was written with the complete intention of never coming back to it again, despite the fact that it has to be maintained to keep the business running - reports have to use the data it generates, other applications have to use it's services because we can't afford to keep re-implementing everything. I also really hate seeing code that seems like the dev locked themselves up in their basement for a decade to write it. All sorts of custom switches, hardcoded configuration values, experimental tech embedded so deep the only graceful way to relieve that debt is to nuke it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

RadiantSecurity 7y ago

> Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. All of these examples make sense in the context of your business, but in some environments these might be best practice ;)

nwah1 7y ago
There's different levels of concern for a public API and an internal interface. If you control all publishers and subscribers, then you don't need to worry quite as much about sanity checking inputs or making every possible workable input produce a valid result.
foo101 7y ago
> but in some environments these might be best practice What are those environments? Can you be more specific?
- macintux 7y ago
  I don’t know what they had in mind, but certainly Erlang encourages those sorts of approaches.
- RadiantSecurity 7y ago
  There are plenty of environments where deviating from spec (even when fixing an apparently trivial bug) would not be ok without assessing the situation for potential unintended behaviors. High-risk systems where a software bug could result in loss of life - aviation, submarine tech, defense, medical etc. Edit: This is for throwing exceptions on undefined behavior. For unlimited threads I imagine scenarios exist particularly when scalable computing is so popular. Large high traffic web stores such as Amazon/Ebay, financial institutions, etc. Either way, the problem shouldn't be solved by an individual developer on a project making things up as they go - its a problem that probably needs to be defined at a framework layer, and discussed within the team of developers and requirements definers.

Hermitian909 7y ago

Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? When I started programming seriously I had a mentor who gave me a long list of my shortcomings. It's taken years of hard, dedicated work to rectify most of those problems and I still have a huge distance to cover to be as good as I want to be. Being a good programmer is a skillet acquired with hard, concentrated effort over time; not just a good attitude with some self-awareness.

colechristensen 7y ago
It is somewhat semantics but there is a big distinction between being aware and unaware of your failings that has a real impact on your output.
baroffoos 7y ago
OP said "probably not" not "certainly not". Most people do not have a mentor to tell them everything they are doing wrong so they are probably not aware.
disjhshava 7y ago
In general, people tend to be overconfident in their beliefs and too slow to incorporate new information. There is experimental evidence to back this up (pdf warning: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publication/230726569_Knowing_with_certainty_the_appropriateness_of_extreme_confidence/links/00b4952b854b29281c000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publica...). I think this applies to engineers as well as anyone else.
watwut 7y ago
> Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? Being aware of what you are lacking allows you to improve on those things, work around those issues and accept when collegue is actually good at stuff you are not good at.

29athrowaway 7y ago

Awareness is one important part of self-improvement, but taking the initiative and doing something about it is another thing.

tjpnz 7y ago

A poor programmer wouldn't be on HN and the point about never learning anything new reinforces that. Most of the article reads like satire.

drharby 7y ago
That's a major assumption. Many get curious when a plumber or other blue collar worker talks on an hn thread. This isnt a secret clubhouse, its a new forum. Just...tech focused.
- tjpnz 7y ago
  Getting to that thread regardless of the subject assumes some level of intellectual curiosity (however low that may be). That seems to be the thing lacking among all the worst devs I've had the misfortune of working with.

michannne 7y ago

I know many a poor programmer. The consistent thread between them is that they don't appreciate the fact that they don't know everything. You may be very well versed in a tech stack, but there are undoubtedly architectural implementations or design choices or algoritms which you simply don't know or haven't considered. A good programmer recognizes the situations where they cannot come up with the best solution and makes the necessary safety changes so that when the best solution does reveal itself, it's easy to swap out the old solution. Another trait is the belief that they either never need to touch their code after they write it, or worse, only they will ever touch their code. It fires me up to see code that was written with the complete intention of never coming back to it again, despite the fact that it has to be maintained to keep the business running - reports have to use the data it generates, other applications have to use it's services because we can't afford to keep re-implementing everything. I also really hate seeing code that seems like the dev locked themselves up in their basement for a decade to write it. All sorts of custom switches, hardcoded configuration values, experimental tech embedded so deep the only graceful way to relieve that debt is to nuke it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]