I agree with most of the points of the article (finding a balance for testing, naming, writing readable code, etc.) I'm not a fan of the tone, though. I might c

I agree with most of the points of the article (finding a balance for testing, naming, writing readable code, etc.) I'm not a fan of the tone, though. I might consider myself a "rockstar" programmer, if not for the fact that it sounds incredibly douchey. At least I'm closer to that than a "workhorse". And yet I don't think I fall into the negative stereotypes he mentions... I guess that explains my reaction (not to mention the self-quoting of tweets). My biggest problem with software development as a profession is that people don't think before they do it. I've found that a lot of people just hack away randomly with some code that approximates their idea of how it should work. It usually doesn't work, so they just change things aimlessly until it appears to. I can definitely understand this mentality, I've been there--it happens to me when I'm programming beyond my understanding. But I try very hard to recognize when this happens, and stop to think more. There's very little value in writing code that even the author doesn't understand. Accumulate enough of this code, and you get the typical horribly-designed patchwork mess that nobody can read, debug, or change. To me, the ability to solve problems that you're not familiar with is paramount in importance for actual software engineering. If you're just building some CRUDdy business app that does nothing remotely complicated, OK. But bubble sorts and link shorteners? Come on, that stuff is simple. Maybe you never need to implement those specific examples, but as a placeholder for general problem-solving skill, it's a low bar. Perhaps that's why the title refers to "software developer" rather than "software engineer". I don't really know. But I do wish there were more jobs that required real problem solving skills (and don't require a PhD...).