>In the future, stay the Hell out of other people's code.
But then says:
>Actually it was terrible advice, advice that I've gone out of my way to ignore in the years since. But those words were valuable nevertheless, and I've gone back to them time and again.
So was that advice bad and why? Or did it end up being useful, and why?
The advice was bad. But it was useful in helping him maintain perspective any time another engineer had comments about how crappy his code was. His instinct was to give them the same advice, but his brain would override reminding him of why that's bad advice to give.
It also helped him understand politics in a company, and how it gets in the way of certain types of progress.
Learned nothing.
Everytime someone comes up and says his code sucks he remembers being a young engineer admonished for making someone's code better, and instead of getting defensive, he listens.
One is logic, the other is applied.
Not according to any formal or colloquial definition I've ever heard.
You may be able to come up with better ways to do things, but that often means replacing or voiding the efforts of coworkers or bosses. People have fragile egos, and may feel their job is being threatened since you are arranging things more efficiently. This could churn office politics, and cause problems that have little to do with the job itself (emotionally compromised workers and shifting hierarchy).
Likewise, it is our responsibility to embrace the skills of fellow workers in order to enhance workflow. There is no such thing as superiority if you're a member of a team. Kill the ego and think about constant improvement for the group
Comment: Having a work environment where people up discard and replace the the work other people have done is really really bad for moral. If you let that stuff happen continually you'll end up with a team where no one cares or takes ownership of anything.