It seems to me that the core of the problem is that programmers are both writers and critiques. Indeed, imagine a world in which authors would publish in a mag

It seems to me that the core of the problem is that programmers are both writers and critiques. Indeed, imagine a world in which authors would publish in a magazine both their own short stories and a review of a short written by another author for the same magazine. Unlike our authors in this Magazine From Hell we programmers have objective criteria on which we can base our critique of the work of others when we have to, namely a specifications, coding standards, etc.