Simple fact is, if you worked for me, I would have fired you for that. Junior devs are supposed to do bad things - that's why they aren't senior devs.
Amen. I don't know about firing, but I'd definitely be having a conversation about proper mentorship. We hire juniors because they show promise, but need to learn. Being snarky and shutting them down doesn't just hurt the individual dev – it hurts the entire company.
My wife used to work as a copy editor at a major newspaper and worked with one of those "laugh at and make rude comments about other people's work" kind of people. The copy editing checks had to be checked by another copy editor before it was allowed to be forwarded to the layout team for placement in the news paper. How the story checkin and checkout system worked was that your submitted checks were anonymous to other team members. So, there was this one guy on copy editing team who openly mocked and call other people's work "stupid" and "idiotic". He could never say the person's name that he was talking about, but since every copy editor was in the same room, you knew he might be talking about your work. Everyone hated the guy and everyone complained about the guy. My wife would say how much everyone just hated working with the guy and he was just one of those people that made the job unpleasant.
Then layoffs came around (Newspaper in the Internet Age). When this guy was laid off, champagne bottle were opened up and people celebrated. You know when someone is bad when there is a "sorry to see you go" bar get together and they are not invited. A strange thing happened though, productivity went up because people felt better about submitting their work for final approval. Less copy editor mistakes, less stress, more learning, more openness and more engaging with other team members happend. Barriers between teams fell and even with layoffs, people felt better.
It turns out that the person who mocks other people's work, make for a crappy work environment. You can be tolerant of failures on technical levels, but failure in personal level should not be tolerated. Be pleasant to work with, or should you should be fired.
Maybe an analogy would do better. In the Army, Soldiers go through basic training and are taught just that - the basics. Once they show up at a unit, they will have lots of questions and lots to learn. But if they show up with their name patch velcroed upside-down on their uniform, I guarantee their Sergeant is going to chuckle before they tell the Soldier to turn it right-side up.
I've seen people write things like: if (true == true)
I won't be mean to you about it, but I can't promise I won't chuckle a little before explaining why that's unnecessary. If you've been working in a professional setting for 3 years and are writing code like that, then yeah, I might struggle to be empathetic.
Which, if you make that an === in JavaScript, can actually make sense in some situations :)
I'm referencing a time when I was in school, and most everything was taught in Java, where that doesn't make sense. This was written by someone who was almost finished their degree and had already started at their professional job. Definitely junior, but I still feel like that's stretching the acceptable level of noobishness. That said, I have an EE degree, so maybe had to solve / reduce a lot more boolean algebra expressions than a straight CS major?
His statement could mean anything from cruelly laughing in the face of the junior dev during a face to face code review to having a quick heh under his breath from the privacy of his office at the developer's use of "if (foo === true)". Or anything in between.
There are such judgements in every thread.
It's even better when it is paired with the famous "I would not hire you" (or its variation "I would fire you") although the conversation does relate to this at all, the OP has shown no intent no be hired in any company, let alone the answerer's company, and, icing on the cake, the answerer is not in a position to hire anyone.
That is my defense and the only time I've laughed at someone's code. I guess the combination of him talking himself up big about all the amazing things he did at Amazon and the code vomit that he actually produced was too much for me.
I regret it, but he shouldn't really have been that junior after 3 years?
Though I guess I still write pretty shitty code now too on occasion.
Alright, I'll take the karma L in this case.
Well, no. It is the product of someone's work. Someone who is trying to learn and should be supported and taught how to make it better and why it is not as good as it should be.
Hell, every now and then I stumble across some idiocy in the code base and think "LOL, whoever did it this way is an idiot". git blame. "OH, hahaha, it was me, what an idiot past me was, amirite guys?" Everyone on the team takes levity about mistakes very seriously ;) It's healthy.
Mocking condescension on the other hand is a different thing entirely.
Harsh, withering treatment is quite common not just with developers but in all technical fields. I wish things were different, but that's the reality as I've seen it.