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Your comments reveal a person who's never worked in a sizable programming team for any length of time, be it at a large firm, a large collaborative project, or
by brecht 17y ago
Your comments reveal a person who's never worked in a sizable programming team for any length of time, be it at a large firm, a large collaborative project, or what-have-you. Which is fine; the article is not directed at the basement hacker, or the fad-du-jour startup slave, or whomever. It's toward the person who's been working long enough to prove themselves capable as a producer, and who's developed a (very common!) ego about their own abilities. Overcoming that ego can be a surprisingly difficult thing to do, if you're reasonably competent. But it's definitely a necessary step to "becoming a better software developer".
- edw519 17y agoYour comments reveal a person who's never worked in a sizable programming team for any length of time, be it at a large firm, a large collaborative project, or what-have-you. Funny, OP is 180 degrees from the truth and sadly, so are you. OP's rules are nice (and cute) in theory, but it's my experience on large projects with many people in many environments that helps me see through OP's bullshit. Hundreds of projects have shown me that the problem with most programmers is not ego, it's incompetence. I'd gladly take one primadonna over 10 drones into battle with me. In fact I have, and now it's the only way I'll take on major work any more. Great work requires great competence, not pop psychology. If that competence comes with ego attached, fine, I can deal with that. What I won't deal with is crap produced by someone who cares about it but doesn't have the confidence or expertise to stand behind it.
- julsonl 17y agoCompetence has to begin from something. Even the best hackers wrote ugly, buggy code when they were young. You gain competence by improving from your mistakes, but how can you improve if you don't recognize that your previous code was crap?