Re: True faiths ( was Re: The true faith )

[tfb@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick)]

Kenny Tilton <ktilton@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> no, you only think you do. then your average programmer looks at the
> code for a week and before you can set up the first interview ms/mr
> average says "looks pretty straightforward to me, i can maintain this."
> 
> otoh, if mr/ms average gives up on the mess, the dearly departed most
> assuredly was not great nor even very good.

Hmm, for the slightly-below-average programmer, though, often they'll
*think* they can maintain something, but in doing so will fuck up all
over the place, break perfectly nice algorithms, change things to
ineffecient algorithms, etc., not because they *couldn't* have
followed the nicely-documented, cleverly written code, but because
they figured it would be easier to do things the "normal" way whenever
they had to change a part of a program.  Things can stepwise decline
into a mess in the hands of people who want everything to be done the
"normal" way.  The problem is that most programs are a mess, so
changing things to work the way everything else does is likely to make
it worse, if it was above-average to start with.

> early on in my career i heard a line that puzzled me until i saw OPC:
> "if you have an indispensible programmer, fire them."

I understand what this is supposed to mean, but what about the very
well-read, educated programmer who knows (or knows how to find) better
ways of doing lots of things than the normal, naive method/algorithm?
Such a programmer can be indiscpensible for things that can't be done
in the naive way (for efficiency or complexity reasons, or whatever).

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