Opening Black Boxes

I've always done this because of my background as an electronics/hardware hacker (where doing it is great fun :D).

It surprised me when I finally started working at a place with professional programmers that so many just didn't do it at all with code.

I often find it's quicker to write a bit of code than try and work out how a library would work, then deal with installing it and maintaining that installation as it gets updated. Of course, this depends on how much of the library is needed.

And when I have looked, at first I was surprised to see ugly code, things remmed out, variables declared and never used, debug statements still in production code...

Kind of shattered the whole "shrink-wrapped programmer on a pedestal" thing I had going...

Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=882397.

I thought hn code checked for dupes?

Ah--the above link will be wrong when new blog entry gets posted.