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Behind the 'Bad Indian Coder' (2013)

8 points by avinassh 12y ago

bhhaskin 12y ago
I think bad developers in general are on the rise. It is extremely easy to produce bad code, but it can be quite difficult to produce quality code.
- beat 12y ago
  Uphill both ways, man. I've been programming since before the current Stanford grads were born. Code has always sucked, and it will always suck.
beat 12y ago
I think it's something of a cultural issue as well as an educational issue. In India, being a programmer is a nice job that brings parental and social approval. It's something you do because you're not passionate about doing something else. In the US, programmers are still "geeks", and it's not a cool job to do - especially the mainstream corporate/enterprise programming that employs most programmers. So American programmers are more likely to do it because they're passionate about it, not because they want a steady job. The result of this is that the best Indian programmers - the smart, passionate ones - are every bit as good as the best American programmers. But the average Indian programmer is significantly worse, dragged down by hordes who don't know how to code well and don't care that they don't know. An interesting contrast to this is Russian programmers. In my experiences with numerous offshore teams, Russian teams are more likely to produce working code, but they're also much more likely to go "off the reservation" and do things that aren't in the requirements. I summed it up to a former co-worker recently, who had dealt with Russian and Indian teams on the same project with me, as "The Indian team won't do anything unless you explicitly tell them to do so. The Russian team will do anything unless you explicitly tell them not to do so." The cultural things are important as well as the educational aspects. I don't think an American CS degree is great preparation for real-world professional programming, either. What matters is how the programmer chooses to learn after the formal education stops - especially off-the-job learning. Programmers who are passionate, who love to learn and demand the best work out of themselves for sheer pride... they're great. The rest are mostly useless.

8 points by avinassh 12y ago

I think bad developers in general are on the rise. It is extremely easy to produce bad code, but it can be quite difficult to produce quality code.

beat 12y ago
Uphill both ways, man. I've been programming since before the current Stanford grads were born. Code has always sucked, and it will always suck.

beat 12y ago

I think it's something of a cultural issue as well as an educational issue. In India, being a programmer is a nice job that brings parental and social approval. It's something you do because you're not passionate about doing something else. In the US, programmers are still "geeks", and it's not a cool job to do - especially the mainstream corporate/enterprise programming that employs most programmers. So American programmers are more likely to do it because they're passionate about it, not because they want a steady job. The result of this is that the best Indian programmers - the smart, passionate ones - are every bit as good as the best American programmers. But the average Indian programmer is significantly worse, dragged down by hordes who don't know how to code well and don't care that they don't know. An interesting contrast to this is Russian programmers. In my experiences with numerous offshore teams, Russian teams are more likely to produce working code, but they're also much more likely to go "off the reservation" and do things that aren't in the requirements. I summed it up to a former co-worker recently, who had dealt with Russian and Indian teams on the same project with me, as "The Indian team won't do anything unless you explicitly tell them to do so. The Russian team will do anything unless you explicitly tell them not to do so." The cultural things are important as well as the educational aspects. I don't think an American CS degree is great preparation for real-world professional programming, either. What matters is how the programmer chooses to learn after the formal education stops - especially off-the-job learning. Programmers who are passionate, who love to learn and demand the best work out of themselves for sheer pride... they're great. The rest are mostly useless.