Lies Programmers Tell Themselves

itwbennett writes "Everybody lies to themselves now and again in both their personal lives ('my bathroom scale probably needs to be recalibrated') and professional lives ('this code doesn't need commenting'). ITworld has compiled some of the common lies programmers tell themselves. Here are a few examples: 'This bug won't take long to fix.' 'No one could possibly fail to understand my simple user interface.' 'Code is self documenting.' 'My homebrew framework will be nimble, lightweight, debugged, and easy to use.' 'I know this is dirty code, I will rewrite it later.' 'It's just one line... it won't break anything.' '"It works on my machine.' 'I don't need version control.' 'It's written in ____, so it'll be easy to ____.' What would you add to this list?"

Comments

Lie 10

[n1ywb]

Lie 10: itworld.com has interesting, informative, insightful, and meaningful content.

we'll be greeted as liberators

[lemur3]

oh uhh lies programmers tell themselves..

how about

this new website design is going to be great, our users will love it!

Re:Lame

[mbone]

Also can we please stop posting articles from itworld. They are all the same: tiny bits of content split over a ridiculous number of pages to maximize ad revenue.

Seriously, this is like 1990s levels of ad spamming. First you have the full window click through ad, then you have ads on every 10 word slide, a click through in the middle of the slides, and then just for good measure the last slide isn’t a content slide but yet another ad!

I feel like I need 10 levels of toolbars and bonzo-buddy running in the background to really appreciate the experience of this site.

This

I generally just don't click through anything that doesn't provide the article (picture, whatever) in the original link. When, for some reason (as with this article) I do, I generally feel (as with this article) cheated.

Annoying link!

[antdude]

http://deslide.clusterfake.net... OR http://desli.de/11IH for one ugly web page to read all at once! ;)

Re:Commenting code

[PvtVoid]

Good code rarely needs commenting though. Too many comments are often an indicator of poorly organized code.

Dear person who thinks that "good code rarely needs commenting": the entire world wants to beat you senseless with a nine iron.

You're welcome.

Re:Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think anyone will smell this fart."

Re: abstract wacky name

[jd2112]

Named for their founders, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler respectively.

I don't need to fix compiler warnings.

[Z00L00K]

People that don't think that they need to fix compiler warnings produce programs that aren't always reliable.

And even if the code is free of warnings - there may still be a need to run 'lint', 'findbugs' or any similar tool that does a more thorough analysis of the code in order to detect problems that can grow over time.