Return of the Real Programmer | Hacker News Reader

Return of the Real Programmer

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5 pointschuckm8 comments

I'm always dubious of rants like this about hypothetical really horrible programmers. Even if they exist, I don't see what's the point of talking about them since they're so unproductive that they're certainly irrelevant and can be safely ignored. Once in a while you might have to maintain their unmaintainable code but such is life.

I always get the feeling the ranter is just an average programmer who want to remind everyone how they're so much better than the worst. I can't imagine a really great programmer wasting his time doing a rant like this about programmers who get everything wrong consistently.

The worst offender in this category is probably Jeff Atwood.

These rants are pointless. Divisive, corrosive. Making up names and stereotypes to apply to other people.

Yes, we're surrounded by a sea of bad code. Much of which comes from bad programmers, many of whom will never accept that they are bad. That's a banal observation.

What isn't banal? An example of a beautiful thing. There are lots of problems that are still awaiting their beautiful solution. If you want to promote beautiful code, publish some. Or, find some code you think is un-beautiful, improve it, and publish that. Teach people how to make such things. Show, don't tell.

It doesn't matter what the personalities of other programmers are like. What matters is the product. Critique the product.

Summary: Real programmers (not complimentary) don't document, don't maintain, always do things the hard way because that's the only way to get bragging rights, object strenuously to giving up even a little freedom in order to make it harder to make mistakes. Oldskool RPs programmed in hard things like assembler, which at least forced you to know your way around algorithims and memory management. The new breed do not have that saving grace.

Commentary: It sounds like the difference between a Real Programmer and a good hacker is skill, documentation and math/data structures/algorithims. I can't remember which essay it was in but pg recommended always doing things the hard way because if it even occured to you to do things the hard way, it's probably because you can see a benefit from it already, and it makes it much harder for competitors to catch up if you do this consistently.

Moreover, I think the article's definition of Real programmers somehow do not work well in a team

I'm sorry, but there are too many exceptions to the rule this author is trying to prove for me to buy into his point. He contends that "Real" (i.e. overtly macho) programmers don't maintain code and don't accept the "wisdom" of static typing because they don't care about the mundane and boring tasks of ensuring code works ---but--- they do write unit tests because that, somehow, shows that they are manly and daring and not that they care about the mundane and boring tasks of ensuring code works?

Huh? This is the second blatantly anti-Ruby post from this blog in less than a week. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they had an axe to grind...

The author seems never read the classics -- The Story Of Mel, Real Programmer, from Jargon File. http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_49.html#SEC56

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

Maybe they do now, in this decadent era of Lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly" software but back in the Good Old Days, when the term "software" sounded funny and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes, Real Programmers wrote in machine code...

Year 1983.

The original "Real Programmers don't use Pascal" was quite obviously an ironic piece. Debunking humorous writings is somehow never humorous :)

If you think it's even remotely possible that a Real Programmer would use ruby, you have entirely missed the point.

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