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Bitter much? I've been fortunate to have never worked with bad programmers. Some were not super experienced but still they cared. They did their best. A bad pr

Bitter much? I've been fortunate to have never worked with bad programmers. Some were not super experienced but still they cared. They did their best. A bad programmer would be someone who didn't care about the next guy. As for "A" players, they exist. They develop code that others can understand yet probably wouldn't haven't have come up with themselves. Hard work does not make you an "A" player. Intelligent work does.

recursive 14y ago
It's possible to care and do your best and still turn out worse code than someone who doesn't care. I've seen it.
- endlessvoid94 14y ago
  Yep. Passion, unfortunately, doesn't equal quality.
kaeawc 14y ago
I have worked with people who not only do not care about the next guy, but will insult and belittle others in every way. This ranged from racism to sexism to throwing his title of "senior software engineer" to order others who did not report to him. This person was almost let go for these reasons multiple times, yet toed the line in front of management. I am glad that I've only met one person who was that negatively impactful... yet I'm just 2.5 years out of school. I feel of buzz words like "rockstar", it makes things extremely ambiguous. If I say full stack dev, you know that person is comfortable going from data stores all the way to UI. If I say guru in python, that means he is not only proficient but an able teacher of python. If I say rockstar dev or A player, what is that? If you say someone who works intelligently does that mean those that are not A players are unintelligent? In that case I would only want to hire A players... and then why not avoid the buzz word and say that? On the other hand, I can see how addressing someone in terms of praise on their endless ability to solve problems by their great capacity for creative thinking would warrant a term like rockstar.
ddw 14y ago
> A bad programmer would be someone who didn't care about the next guy. Unfortunately I wish this was true to non-programmers. But a "successful" programmer ships without worrying about how difficult it is to add a feature or to debug a problem when they're gone. At least that's my experience in my current job where I'm mostly maintaining shitty code. And I know it's a culture problem too.
- kawsper 14y ago
  Yup, the company hero programmer ships and meet deadlines. While all the "bad" programmers sits there, worrying about stuff breaking in the wild, with only their 1% code-coverage tests to verify that everything is working.

recursive 14y ago

It's possible to care and do your best and still turn out worse code than someone who doesn't care. I've seen it.

endlessvoid94 14y ago
Yep. Passion, unfortunately, doesn't equal quality.

kaeawc 14y ago

I have worked with people who not only do not care about the next guy, but will insult and belittle others in every way. This ranged from racism to sexism to throwing his title of "senior software engineer" to order others who did not report to him. This person was almost let go for these reasons multiple times, yet toed the line in front of management. I am glad that I've only met one person who was that negatively impactful... yet I'm just 2.5 years out of school. I feel of buzz words like "rockstar", it makes things extremely ambiguous. If I say full stack dev, you know that person is comfortable going from data stores all the way to UI. If I say guru in python, that means he is not only proficient but an able teacher of python. If I say rockstar dev or A player, what is that? If you say someone who works intelligently does that mean those that are not A players are unintelligent? In that case I would only want to hire A players... and then why not avoid the buzz word and say that? On the other hand, I can see how addressing someone in terms of praise on their endless ability to solve problems by their great capacity for creative thinking would warrant a term like rockstar.

ddw 14y ago

> A bad programmer would be someone who didn't care about the next guy. Unfortunately I wish this was true to non-programmers. But a "successful" programmer ships without worrying about how difficult it is to add a feature or to debug a problem when they're gone. At least that's my experience in my current job where I'm mostly maintaining shitty code. And I know it's a culture problem too.

kawsper 14y ago
Yup, the company hero programmer ships and meet deadlines. While all the "bad" programmers sits there, worrying about stuff breaking in the wild, with only their 1% code-coverage tests to verify that everything is working.