Comments on: Bad developer ≠ novice developer

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:54:04 +0000

I totally agree with you on this! I’ve just started a new job as a PHP developer and I am struggling big time, due to years of taking short cuts and not actually taking the time to understand the fundamentals of what I was actually doing. I am considering going back to the drawing board.

By: Some lesser-known truths about Programming | aceph

Some lesser-known truths about Programming | aceph — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:04:54 +0000

[…] Great programmers spend little of their time writing code – at least code that ends up in the final product. Programmers who spend much of their time writing code are too lazy, too ignorant, or too arrogant to find existing solutions to old problems. Great programmers are masters at recognizing and reusing common patterns. Good programmers are not afraid to refactor (rewrite) their code constantly to reach the ideal design. Bad programmers write code which lacks conceptual integrity, non-redundancy, hierarchy, and patterns, and so is very difficult to refactor. It’s easier to throw away bad code and start over than to change it. […]

By: lazyfox

lazyfox — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:25:15 +0000

Awesome,it takes a lot of guts to tell this.Appreciate your honesty.
It also helped me to realize what is a good developer . I am sure you have a lot of braggable work ,but you don’t prefer to brag ,since you keep raising your bar everytime you accomplish something. awesome.

By: EIA Developer

EIA Developer — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:08:05 +0000

I’ve noticed that great programmers have 2 attributes:
1. They are brilliant (I.Q. 130+)
2. They are disciplined (constantly self-training, constantly trying to increase simplicity and clarity)

By: Một vài sự thật ít được biết đến về nghề lập trình « IT Staff

Một vài sự thật ít được biết đến về nghề lập trình « IT Staff — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:20:55 +0000

[…] Những lập trình viên xuất sắc thường tốn rất ít thời gian để viết mã lệnh – hoặc chỉ viết ít nhất khi mà dự án sắp hoàn thành. Còn những lập trình viên hay dành nhiều thời gian để viết mã lệnh thì thường rất là lười, kém hiểu biết, hoặc quá ngạo mạn để giải quyết những vấn đề cũ bằng những cách đã làm qua. Người lập trình viên xuất sắc luôn am hiểu và rất giỏi để nhận ra và tái sử dụng lại các mô hình chung. Những lập trình viên giỏi không sợ tái cấu trúc (viết lại) mã lệnh của họ để đạt được thiết kế như mong muốn. Những lập trình viên tồi viết mã lệnh thường thiếu tính nhất quán, không kế thừa, không thứ tự, không mô hình, và rất khó để tái cấu trúc. Thật dễ dàng để ném đi mã lệnh tồi và bắt đầu lại thì tốt hơn là sửa đổi nó. […]

By: Sum Yung Gai

Sum Yung Gai — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:49:44 +0000

Your mentality and insight shows your promise of becoming a great anything really. This reminds me of something I was told by a music teacher: The learning process has three parts, imitation, integration, and finally understanding.
I think this applies to any skill. I think theres no such thing as a “bad” programmer, just a beginner who refuses to put in the effort to go through the learning process and advance his skills. You can acquire knowledge and become a human encyclopedia without learning the meaning of any of it, and this will show when you try to apply that immense knowledge of yours. Some people just never learn, they don’t want to – I know because I myself am often guilty of this.

By: Tim Lesher

Tim Lesher — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:00:07 +0000

I believe that your term “bad programmer” causes a lot of the confusion. It conflates “programmer with poor practices and attitudes” with “programmer who produces poor quality work”.

Even making that distinction, I know very few “good programmers” who were not “bad programmers” in both senses at the beginning of their careers. Your experience is not at all uncommon. To be precise, all of the good programmers whom I both know now and also knew earlier in their careers had worse practices early in their careers. Your experiences may differ.

The difference is that people who become “good programmers” exercise self-awareness at some point, and start actively improving themselves for the sake of improving themselves. That the quality of the work also improves is a side-effect.

By: hasen

hasen — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:07:47 +0000

Great insight! It explains why VB produces horrible programmers: the emphasis on making it “easy” to get things done without understanding what’s going on, cultivates a culture where you think it’s not important to know what’s going on. The only way yo break free is to un-learn VB by forcing yourself to program in C or Python for a while, even if it seems that VB is way easier and that C is torture.

This also explains why Linux and Unix platform are better for doing serious web development: the average developer working on Linux knows a lot more about how the system works, than the average developer working mainly on Windows. Developing a serious product and managing it requires a great deal of system work, and if you don’t know how your system/platform works, you’re doomed to fail.

Windows can of course be used to build and manage serious web-apps. Stackoverflow is made possible by Windows and the .Net platform (pun intended :P), but that’s partly because Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are not just your average developers.

By: project management nightmares — web developer & system programmer — coder . cl

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:49:56 +0000

[…] mistakes like the ones that appear on sites like The Daily WTF, here we must distinguish the bad developer and novice developer, and also is always required an experienced Software Architect guiding the project, since he/she […]

By: Felipe

Felipe — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:01:19 +0000

I agree with every single word you said. =]

(yet, another programmer learning to scale the mountain)[2]