3 ms·

Perhaps the people who care too much aren't that smart in this case. See the Napoleon anecdote: http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-things-

Perhaps the people who care too much aren't that smart in this case. See the Napoleon anecdote: http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-things-done/ http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-thing...

kamaal 11y ago
Can we stop using the word 'smart' as a synonym for cheating and fraud please? There is nothing smart about faking and pretending to contribute while doing nothing. All the while taking the rewards and benefits which should actually be going to people who do the real work. This even on a short period of time creates an environment which causes the real contributors to go better places leaving the overall ecosystem starved of much needed work.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Stealing credit for other peoples work aside. The hacker mindset to me is to do things in the simplest way possible. Programmer: "I managed to migrate the database with the program I wrote over the past two months" Hacker: "I migrated the database with 3 lines of code"
  - tsotha 11y ago
    Programmer: "But you didn't account for all the edge cases. Your solution seems to work at first glance, but now someone else is going to have to redo what you've done and fix the data problems that resulted from the half-assed job you did."
    - steve-howard 11y ago
      In my experience, a careless engineer will create something brittle and unwieldy that works at first glance, declare success, and move on, leaving others to deal with a painful mess. A thoughtful engineer will think hard about design, comment where there be dragons, and often get rewarded by being reassigned to one of the aforementioned messes. The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. Not to mention that there's value in a product that gets out the door while the competitors are still trying to make things perfect.
      - tsotha 11y ago
        >The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. That's a good observation. Fortunately I've worked myself into the code troll position on my project - nothing goes into the mainline without my approval. Everyone knows I'll reject code that's not well thought through even in the face of looming deadlines.

kamaal 11y ago

Can we stop using the word 'smart' as a synonym for cheating and fraud please? There is nothing smart about faking and pretending to contribute while doing nothing. All the while taking the rewards and benefits which should actually be going to people who do the real work. This even on a short period of time creates an environment which causes the real contributors to go better places leaving the overall ecosystem starved of much needed work.

cmdrfred 11y ago
Stealing credit for other peoples work aside. The hacker mindset to me is to do things in the simplest way possible. Programmer: "I managed to migrate the database with the program I wrote over the past two months" Hacker: "I migrated the database with 3 lines of code"
- tsotha 11y ago
  Programmer: "But you didn't account for all the edge cases. Your solution seems to work at first glance, but now someone else is going to have to redo what you've done and fix the data problems that resulted from the half-assed job you did."
  - steve-howard 11y ago
    In my experience, a careless engineer will create something brittle and unwieldy that works at first glance, declare success, and move on, leaving others to deal with a painful mess. A thoughtful engineer will think hard about design, comment where there be dragons, and often get rewarded by being reassigned to one of the aforementioned messes. The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. Not to mention that there's value in a product that gets out the door while the competitors are still trying to make things perfect.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      >The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. That's a good observation. Fortunately I've worked myself into the code troll position on my project - nothing goes into the mainline without my approval. Everyone knows I'll reject code that's not well thought through even in the face of looming deadlines.