11–20 of 73 posts
So true. You have to learn that programming is politics from day one. Unfortunately, unlike the sciences where there is a framework for determining who is good and who is bad, in programming it is left up to sometimes immature people to make their case. The best way to silence them is with working software.
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 d…
I feel of buzz words like "rockstar", it makes things extremely ambiguous. If I say full stack dev, you know that person is comfortable going from data stores all the way to UI. If I say guru in python, that means he is not only proficient but an able teacher of python. If I say rockstar dev or A player, what is that? If you say someone who works intelligently does that mean those that are not A players are unintelligent? In that case I would only want to hire A players... and then why not avoid the buzz word and say that?
On the other hand, I can see how addressing someone in terms of praise on their endless ability to solve problems by their great capacity for creative thinking would warrant a term like rockstar.
Correlation and causation aren't the same thing.
You can correlate good programmers with all kinds of things, but that does not mean that those things make good programmers, necessarily.
...but, you know. There's probably a pretty strong causation in some cases (eg. write code in spare time, play music, speak a second language, believe in TDD, whatever), and if you're trying to be a better programmer, looking at the things that other good programmers do is the right way to get better at it.
Some correlations are obviously stupid though (gender, politics) and I'd be vastly more interested in data mining life-analytics of good programmers for interesting useful correlations (eg. play sport? hand-eye coordination? memory? write c++ for fun? know how to write assembly?) rather than just saying, well, all correlations are probably arbitrary and don't have any relation to causation.
Pity there isn't really any way to get hold of that sort of raw data to play with~
Beyond this, this post brings up an interesting question when examining the unpalatable extremes of the programmer personality spectrum:
Do Programming fundamentalists share ignorance and intolerance tendencies like racists or bigots?
- us vs. them
- the preference of my language/framework vs your language/framework
- there's no way anything can be true or possible if I don't understand it or hold it as my current view point
If we notice, fan boys quickly can get defensive, or worse, assault others that don't fit their way, group, or mould. It's sad, but this is done as much covertly as overtly.
The test: Bring up a tool, process, language or framework that's not in vogue right now but may be perfectly capable. Notice how some (mostly inexperienced and insecure themselves) may scoff, belittle, deride, and denigrate others.
I just think it's a shame.
We have in our hands and our minds a way to leave the world better than we found it.
Instead too many of our kin are busy needing to be told we're special rockstar ninjas who are the growth cutting and bleeding edge that are busy crushing and killing things, but continue procrastinating and searching aimlessly here.
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 d…
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.
John Carmack (Doom), Dave Cutler (Windows NT), Jeff Dean (Google's competitive advantage) [2], Bill Joy (Unix, vi), Peter Norvig, Larry Wall (Perl), Steve Wozniak (Apple II), Jamie Zawinski (Netscape), and many more who I may have missed...
All of these programmers/engineers are legendary. For example, Steve Wozniak - read how he hacked a floppy disk and color into the early Apple computers [3].
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017939
[2] http://research.google.com/people/jeff/ Not just Jeff, also Sanjay Ghemway: http://research.google.com/pubs/SanjayGhemawat.html
Craig Silverstein: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~csilvers/
So true. You have to learn that programming is politics from day one. Unfortunately, unlike the sciences where there is a framework for determining who is good and who is bad, in programming it is left up to sometimes immature people to make their case. The best way to silence them is with working software.
This can be said for nearly every white collar job besides maybe trading or something similarly measurable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This can be said for nearly every white collar job besides maybe trading or something similarly measurable.
With sciences you have citations, peer review, credentials, etc. What do you have when management absolutely loves their immature high school dropout rockstar because they fooled investors enough to bring in big money? I think that programming is a bit of a special case.
You should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman#Work_on_quasicrys...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With sciences you have citations, peer review, credentials, etc. What do you have when management absolutely loves their immature high school dropout rockstar because they fooled investors enough to bring in big money? I think that programming is a bit of a special case.
> With sciences you have citations, peer review, credentials, etc. You should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman#Work_on_quasicrys...
"This myth has many forms, with many attempts to explain the magic power away in terms of some physical characteristics–
1. Programmers who have a penis are good
2. Programmers who do not have a penis are bad
If you believe in this in any way, it is highly likely that you are not only a terrible programmer, you are a terrible person too."
Then on his Twitter he proudly displays in all capitals "Ｉ ＡＭ Ａ ＴＥＲＲＩＢＬＥ ＰＥＲＳＯＮ"