Slashdot Mirror
Are Quirky Developers Brilliant Or Dangerous?
jammag writes "Most developers have worked with a dude like Josh, who's so brilliant the management fawns over him even as he takes a dump in the lobby flowerpot. Eric Spiegel tells of one such Josh, who wears T-shirts with offensive slogans, insults female co-workers and, when asked about documentation, smirks, "What documentation?' Sure, he was whipsmart and could churn out code that saved the company millions, but can we please stop enabling these people?"
Reiser?
Couldn't resist.
But only if you're married to them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yeah, get him a proper litter box. That should solve the problem.
The office females already notice you.
Right before they say things like "Oh dear God that THING.. that mouthbreather is looking at me again. I wish he'd just go away. Ewww gross, look how sweaty his palms are. Think he's ever heard of a shower?"
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
He may be an ass, but I agree with the parent that if you cure cancer I don't care if walk around shirtless and speak in Klingon.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
It only took you 90 words to say what he did in 11.
Obviously he had the time to clearly document his thoughts, while the other guy needed to make his post and make his post NOW!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I used to comment my code's 'intent' and document what I was trying to make it accomplish. (Instead of, and I kid you not, writing shit like "C = C + 1; /* add one to C */" [What was C counting, you fucking butt munch? There's terse and then there's stupid.] )
Then and only then, after documenting the intent, would I feel free to write the code.
I ended up giving courses to the other programmers because I was doing things in CICS Command Level COBOL that they had never heard of (like dynamic memory allocation to take a data structure and stand it on its ear.)
There were two ways to approach the problem.
I choose NOT to be a cock-biting ass-hole about it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"They would prefer that a project *definately* take 16 weeks instead of taking 2 to 9 weeks."
I've obviously been working for the wrong companies for the last 25 years. They would prefer that a project definitely takes 1 week.
I've also encountered the corollary -- I find some absurdly written ridiculous piece of code and wonder what moron wrote it only to find my own initials in the comments.
That's because while you're pair programming, you spend 80% of your time programming and 20% of your time talking about it. When you're solo programming, you spend 80% of your time reading slashdot and 20% of your time programming.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.