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Avoiding Mistakes Can Be a Huge Mistake

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the joys-of-corporate-overlordship dept.

theodp writes "No doubt many will nod knowingly as they read Paul Graham's The Other Half of 'Artists Ship', which delves into the downside of procedures developed by Big Companies to protect themselves against mistakes. Because every check you put on your programmers has a cost, Graham warns: 'And just as the greatest danger of being hard to sell to is not that you overpay but that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, the greatest danger of applying too many checks to your programmers is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for you.' Sound familiar, anyone?"

17 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. It's official by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    From TFA: "Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best ones actually prefer to work hard."

    Thanks for telling me I suck, Paul. Now excuse me while I loaf.

  2. Re:Perhaps by YourExperiment · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?

  3. Re:Perhaps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?

    /irony

  4. Re:Perhaps by ChromeAeonium · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?

    /irony

    They can be docked karma that way, but when they're not sure about something, they can cover their asses and submit anonymously. That way, if something totally whooshes over their heads, they're in the clear. They can later correct their own dumbass mistakes unanonymously and whore karma instead of losing it. What a perfect system!

  5. Re:Perhaps by brez180 · · Score: 1, Funny

    You *lose* at spelling.

  6. Re:Perhaps by mevets · · Score: 3, Funny

    The "robustness" test isn't good enough either. Sometimes poor implementations of good ideas spurn enough innovation and demand that its marginal quality is irrelevant. The early web browsers, email programs, etc.. were likely neither robust or well implemented. On the other hand, some solid, robust good implementations of ideas are so intractable, that at best they merely serve the original purpose, and at worst are like an albatross around the necks of future developers ( usb anybody ?).

    David Parnas proposed that a poor programmer could create demand for dozens of programmers; a unique software situation, as a poor mechanical engineer doesn't scale nearly so well.

  7. Re:Perhaps by sammyF70 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google is evil incarnated, Apple is style-over-function overpriced junk, and "The Year of The Linux Desktop" ain't coming soon.

    Microsoft, on the other hand, has some really funny employees (and Reversi).

    /em ducks

    --
    "DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
  8. I don't care who wrote the article by Joe+Snipe · · Score: 2, Funny

    This sort of thinking does not justify the new userpage.

    --
    Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
  9. Re:Perhaps by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?

    /irony

    They can be docked karma that way, but when they're not sure about something, they can cover their asses and submit anonymously. That way, if something totally whooshes over their heads, they're in the clear. They can later correct their own dumbass mistakes unanonymously and whore karma instead of losing it. What a perfect system!

    Huh. Too bad Slashdot doesn't have a system like that.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Re:Perhaps by kbrasee · · Score: 5, Funny

    /irony

    /woosh

    /irony

    Error: Cyclic Dependency

  12. Re: loose karma by macraig · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes! Free Karma... right after Willie! I'm starting a grassroots movement to save the Karma from untimely demises.

  13. Re:Perhaps by DogAlmity · · Score: 2, Funny

    Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?

    /irony

    They can be docked karma that way, but when they're not sure about something, they can cover their asses and submit anonymously. That way, if something totally whooshes over their heads, they're in the clear. They can later correct their own dumbass mistakes unanonymously and whore karma instead of losing it. What a perfect system!

    Huh. Too bad Slashdot doesn't have a system like that.

    /irony


    I think I'm starting to get the hang of this!

  14. Re:I have mixed feelings. by russotto · · Score: 4, Funny

    At the big company I worked at, someone added some features to code that I wrote. It broke my code. I wanted to go in and fix it. Why not? I knew how it worked. I couldn't without a defect written by a tester.

    Annoying, but easy to handle. Testers love to find bugs, whether it be for the joy of crushing a young programmer's spirit, or for the look of fear in the eyes of the product manager as the release date approaches. Point a tester towards the bug, and he'll go right ahead and write a defect, possibly cackling evilly as he does so.

  15. Re:Perhaps by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Funny

    wow, a Beowulf cluster of /irony

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  16. Re:Agreed, Too Much Oversight Kills by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Then we got acquired by a giant 3-letter company..."

    May I guess? It should be HP or Dell...

  17. Re:Perhaps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    by the federal regulator, but the feds could care less, so long as

    For the love of $deity, its "couldn't care less" !

    Yours sincerely,
    QA.