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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I think this whole "competent coders don't make mistakes" is a testament to the immaturity of the software development world. Real men write in assembly, maybe C if they're a bit tired.

It would be like a construction worker saying "only noobs need a hard hat" or a surgeon refusing to wash their hands because they're careful never to touch anything contaminated. Or maybe simply refusing to wear your seatbelt because you're a good driver.

Guns don't kill people, people do but if your gun has the bad habit of firing randomly when you don't want it to I guess it's fair to blame the gun a little bit as well.

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> or a surgeon refusing to wash their hands because they're careful never to touch anything contaminated.

Fun fact, although perhaps this is specifically what you had in mind: This was pretty much the case until Ignaz Semmelweis [1] noticed that washing your hands caused patients to die less frequently. His suggestion was not well-received by the establishment:

> "Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean."

I'd apologize for going off on a tangent if it wasn't such an accurate analogy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

I don't think it's inaccurate at all. Software development needs a scientific revolution equivalent to that of medicine, wherein every pattern and practice has to be backed up by evidence from a randomised, controlled trial.

I remember sitting in a "software quality" workshop organised by a coder at an old employer. He was enumerating various patterns and best practices, and yet I realised that nothing he was saying was backed up by any evidence beyond appeals to emotion and anecdotes. If he had been trying to sell me on a new religion or a health product, I would have rejected his arguments out of hand, so why should the standard be lower for software development?

> I'd apologize for going off on a tangent if it wasn't such an accurate analogy.

> I don't think it's inaccurate at all.

an accurate - not inaccurate! :)

Surgical checklists have met (and are still meeting in some places) the exact same opposition, which pilot checklist also met when first being implemented.

> Real men write in assembly, maybe C if they're a bit tired.

    root@boxen:~# cat > a.out

Laziness, impatience, and hubris.

  # zcat > /dev/kmem

> "competent coders don't make mistakes"

There's a bit of folklore that I can't remember correctly. One of the seven steps to becomming a hacker (in the pejorative sense) is this kind of overconfidence, not to make mistakes.

The last step is (the believe in) complete controle and omniscence. Another one, I guess, is insomnia.

It hang as a poster in informatics class - fond memories.

Reminds me of this excellent blog post about sharp tools

https://schneems.com/2016/08/16/sharp-tools.html

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