Programming is Terrible

Bitter much?

I've been fortunate to have never worked with bad programmers. Some were not super experienced but still they cared. They did their best. A bad programmer would be someone who didn't care about the next guy.

As for "A" players, they exist. They develop code that others can understand yet probably wouldn't haven't have come up with themselves.

Hard work does not make you an "A" player. Intelligent work does.

The article referred to sexism in tech. Cue downvotes.

This article is an example of everything I don't like about Hacker News. The author decries everyone's supposedly "black and white" world, but commits a far greater sin by replacing it with a one-color world, where everything is grey, all shades of grey are equal, and distinguishing between them makes you a bad person.

The worldview of many here denies the fruits of virtue. Some, like this author, deny even the possibility of virtue. This is the epitome of foolishness - virtue contains the seeds of its own rewards, and always will. As an an example, I read an article on here about a champion competitor in an algorithms challenge. The comments section on here wasn't focused on how he solved the problems, nor on how he prepared for the competitions, nor on how to improve our own skills in this area. The vast majority of the comments were along the lines of "these are meaningless and arbitrary challenges, and his skills are useless. why doesn't he spend that time building something useful? i wouldn't prefer him over another potential hire who was otherwise equally qualified, but didn't win global coding competitions" Meanwhile, a company that was not afraid of righteous judgement is profiting from an excellent problem-solver with great insight into difficult problems.

The endless equivocation, nihilistic relativism, and snarky hit-and-run comments, like the author's jab at sexists, provide no insight into anything. Most comments here lay down a thick smog of words that obfuscate whatever insight their authors may be capable of.

It's possible to care and do your best and still turn out worse code than someone who doesn't care. I've seen it.

This blawg has much potential. Love the post about marginal expected value.