No one is forcing you to read it... I'm a self taught developer and I lack a lot of low level data structure/algorithms knowledge. I really enjoyed reading the article myself and learned something from it. Sorry that you didn't enjoy it.
Would you be ok if the people who worked on your house didn't know about construction basics -- and worse, created stuff that's widely known to be ineffective?
> Customers PAY that company for their services.
If the impact of poor programming is material, customers will send their money elsewhere. Customers evaluate products in a marketplace; unless the sale explicitly mentioned the developers' qualifications, it's not like they are defrauding customers.
Once again, it's OK that you (person, programmer) don't know that. But as a company, there should be a strong guarantee that you (company) have the knowledge to build a good product. It's fine for a company to have some people who don't know this stuff, but not to not have anyone capable (and in a position that allows them to) notice these kind of mistakes.
> Maybe programmers should educate themselves in the basics before working on products people depend on?
That remark clearly puts the onus on individual workers and there is no qualifying statement that anyone who doesn't know this particular thing should be allowed to work, under supervision.
Ever heard of the principle of charity? Programmers should educate themselves, and that includes senior supervision. And they should make sure they used what's best for the job when the ship while still learning -- and if they're unsure, they could check with someone...
Nope, didn't wrote off any of those. In fact I encouraged them, saying programmers should educate themselves (and all of those are ways to do that).
What I did write off was letting selling ineffective staff by interns, apprentices, on-the-job trainees ship to customers...
Do customers pay for a quality product or to have whatever done by cheap or unpaid internets shipped to them?