Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Insults No Developer Wants To Hear? (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: Flame wars in the bug tracker might be exactly the right (harsh) feedback your code needs, writes Peter Wayner in his run-down of the insults no programmer wants to hear about their code or coding skills. "The technology world is a bit different than the pretty, coiffed world of suits and salesdroids where everyone is polite, even when they hate your guts and think you're an idiot. Suit-clad managers may smile and hide their real message by the way they say you're doing "great, real great pal," but programmers often speak their minds, and when that mind has something unpleasant to say, look-out, feelings." Instead of posting this story in a click-bait fashion as presented from InfoWorld, we thought we'd ask the developers of Slashdot: What are some insults no developer wants to hear? Some of the classic insults include: N00b, /dev/null, Eye Candy, Fanboi, and [Nothing]. Are there any insults you are familiar with that aren't mentioned in the list?

Comments

Ooops

[plover]

It compiled cleanly, so he shipped it.

Re:Ooops

[TheReaperD]

That's right up there with "known issue, ship it" that was common during the old Packard Bell days. Any person or company that does that should masturbate with a hedgehog and a straight razor.

Re:Ooops

[CODiNE]

With -w option.

Re:Ooops

[HornWumpus]

We will ship no code, until it compiles AND links.

I worked there. It was on the business cards. Even the customers had senses of humor. Grew into a hellhole.

Re:Ooops

[eric_harris_76]

Quick question: Delay shipping while there is any known issue, no matter how minor?

Quick comment: If that's really what you meant, you might want to reconsider your position, or at least talk with someone who's been involved with software development or software testing.

Another quick question: Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

Grampa

[McGregorMortis]

I live in fear of losing my edge and becoming irrelevant. Maybe I already have.

Re:Grampa

[TheReaperD]

Yea but, if your company isn't stupid, guys like you should be set up to focus on double checking and re-assigning/fixing code errors rather than being just another monkey on the keyboard.

Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't read the full story - don't need to. It not a "story" and
it's not "news." It's just more crap.

As a 25+ year PROFESSIONAL I'm a lot more concerned
with how we can compliment and complement one another's
work and skills. The world is complicated; we need to help
each other.

Smack is fun and important. Ask me: I have no living enemies.

Getting things done is more important.

Re:Is this a joke?

[plover]

I'm a strong advocate of constructive code reviews that provide useful feedback, while leaving the egos and personal stuff out. It's important for everyone to participate, to both give and receive feedback. First, you help your team improve your product. Second, you learn about the new sections of code; how the new functionality was implemented. That's important on a large product.

And then there's the one that many of the old guys overlook: nobody knows it all, so everyone can learn from anyone, including the new kid on the team. We can all see how technology and computers have evolved dramatically over the decades; it's a mistake to believe that software design and engineering hasn't been simultaneously evolving for the better.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you have no living enemies, you stood up, crushed your enemies, saw them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of the suits.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got one for you:

"You don't need to hit enter every couple words, grandpa, word wrap will keep your text on the screen."

Re:Is this a joke?

[flopsquad]

Now see here, you young whipper snapper I don't know who you think you're deali$

I don't care one bit for your condescending, flippant attitude about line wrapp$

And while I was stapling punch cards to vacuum tubes in the golden age of compu$

I single-handedly rewrote our nuclear missile guidance systems on an 80x24 term$

And the whole time I was with Tim Leary ripped in half on sunshine acid and amy$

Look I'm sorry for what I said earlier about your mother, I just get cranky abo$

Constantly trampling my prize zinnias! And my fescue isn't going to reseed itse$

Jesus they're back, I have to go chase them off while waving a rake in the air.

Re:Is this a joke?

[KermodeBear]

And then there's the one that many of the old guys overlook: nobody knows it all, so everyone can learn from anyone, including the new kid on the team.

I've been doing software for about fifteen years professionally and I love having new people join my team. They bring a fresh perspective and are often the catalysts for change. They don't have the blessing and curse of institutional knowledge and in the course of asking questions, they always get to a point of, "Why do we do that? There's gotta be a better way..." Congratulations, they've just signed themselves up to improve something - and they usually do.

Re:Is this a joke?

[plover]

There's a lot here to fix.

I'm a strong advocate of constructive code reviews that provide useful feedback, while leaving the egos and personal stuff out.

Is "I don't like this variable name" constructive feedback?

Part of it depends on your coding standards. The first standard on our list is from Scott Myers: "Don't sweat the small stuff." Other teams have really strong naming conventions, and as a member of those teams, you'd be expected to follow their standards. In our team we rely on mature discussion, and a comment phrased like that is not very mature.

Is "I think it would be more readable if you did [equivalently-readable alternative]" constructive feedback?

Sure! I'd read what the reviewer wrote because they may be confused by my original choices. I'm certainly not always right, and I can't accurately judge what someone else might find readable. Does that mean I'd change my code? Maybe.

Are "readability" regimes backed by armies of style guide Mandarins constructive feedback, or are they hazing? How about a reviewer who has readability saying "I approve this for the code review, but not for readability," are they being constructive? or are they insulting you, contributing to your hazing, and shirking their duty?

In general, I find that if you expect teams to do the right thing and behave maturely, they will deliver. The problem is when egos are brought into the reviews. Keep them from being personal, and settle them privately. If you're still having swarms of negative feedback on readability, maybe there really is a problem and the code is too complex. Break it up into simpler methods. Use polymorphism instead of switch statements. Use explaining variables instead of magic numbers. There are a lot of refactorings that can help.

What about saying "does this have test coverage?" when the request is outside the team's historical norm and the reviewer has no responsibility for scheduling your time?

Automated test coverage is a requirement for successfully iterating rapidly and deploying frequently; it's a core requirement of Agile. If a team historically doesn't have automated testing, is it wrong for the new guy to wonder why the team is not following modern development practices? When is the right time to introduce something new? Also, look at your review process, and who you invite. Don't extend review invitations outside of the team, unless you really need the opinions of a specific subject matter expert.. Especially don't invite the company's notorious "style Mandarins".

I find reviewers look for nits and try to mark your code as theirs. They can write it the way they want to when they're writing it.

This is another occurrence when getting a team to agree to coding standards can help settle the disputes. If it's a nit, it's either in violation of the terms the team agreed to, or you can tell the reviewer "it's not in the standards, and I don't think this is a bad way to do it".

I'm not saying we shouldn't do code reviews. I'm saying how much of this are you going to punt to "solve your team issues"? The code reviews are creating the team issues.

I can't fix your broken team. What I can do is tell you that when you do reviews well, when everyone matures to the point where they can leave their egos at the door, they can help bring a team together, and leave you all with better code at the end of the day. If you're trying to make a change, this is a good place where you can lead by example.

Code reviews as they are actually done are adversarial motivation and only escape becoming completely dickish by rare and heroic good character.

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that your team operates that way. Good behavior should be expected, and shouldn't be rare or heroic. That would definitel

Re:Is this a joke?

[cyberchondriac]

Ask me: I have no living enemies.

You... you killed them all??

Re: Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Conan the Developer?

Re:Is this a joke?

[newcastlejon]

And if you have no living enemies, you stood up, crushed your enemies, saw them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of the suits.

I prefer hot water and soft toilet paper myself.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Hognoxious]

I think I drove past your workplace. It's the one with a unicorn paddock instead of a parking lot, right?

In most places you'd get labelled as "not having the right skills" (somehow they expect you to learn a specific organisations idiosyncrasies before you get there) or "not a team player".

"Did you even test this??!!!"

[tonyyeb]

"Yes but as I'm not a moron I never thought of the user story from your perspective..."

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes but as I'm not a moron I never thought of the user story from your perspective..."

My absolute favourite insult is the BS when I say something is likely to exceed the deadline, and yes, part of the reason is I don't currently know technology XYZ, that it is implied that it is my job and any competent programmer would already know technology XYZ. Even if technology XYZ is mainstream, that doesn't mean I've studied it and I can wedge in learning enough to do that task on top of all the others.

In short the idea is if you can't meet the schedule you are stupid. It is never that their schedule is stupid, or they should have assigned someone else who already had the requisite experience if they needed the schedule met that badly, or they should actual listen when I suggest ways to actually meet the schedule, which do not involve technology XYZ. Nope, if you can't get it done to plan in the way they want it, with the technology they want, then your stupid, because that is your job.

After about three weeks of arguing that the approach is ill advised, if the schedule really is firm, I think I finally got them to agree that missing the schedule is something they may have to accept to get everything else. Well, there is still one holdout. We shall see.

Basically it seems like your encouraged to lie early and often, since when you do inevitably fail since the work load was more than was likely to be completed, you can make the excuse then and it would be an altogether less annoying amount of time.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[plover]

"Yes but as I'm not a moron I never thought of the user story from your perspective..."

I hope this was intended as a joke in poor taste.

Something really hard for some developers to understand is that our peer groups are usually not representative of our user base. We're used to hanging around with really bright people, people who apply logic to questions and use evidence to arrive at conclusions. When we forget that not everyone in the world is like that, we assume that everyone who touches our applications is smart, quick, logical, and willing to read instructions. In reality, we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)

That means a lot of attention needs to be paid to User Experience. A few years ago we went through our application and made sure that every screen was at a 5th grade reading level. We made sure our users could be trained on the basic functions, features, and processes in less than half an hour. Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Pseudonymous Powers]

I agree with most of your user interface principles, except for the the "fifth grade reading level" one. You might have a point, but I really don't like talking down to grown-ass adults.

I've worked on software where I put a lot of thought into describing the error in clear, complete, accurate, and accessible terms, only to be told that the users aren't going to "even bother to read it because it's too long". In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Quirkz]

Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment.

I'm reminded of a recent experience on the "support" site for a television I'd recently bought. The TV had a bug where it would turn itself on once per day, based on a timer that could not be turned off. I figured a firmware update might fix things, so I go to the site, which has almost nothing on it except for a prompt for model number of the TV. I type in the model number and hit enter:

"Wrong number!" says the error page, prompting me again to enter the serial number.

And that's it. I'm just wrong, and I need to keep trying until I get it right. Except I've checked the box, I've checked the back of the TV, and it's the exact same number in all cases. Except upon input it's "Wrong number!"

There's no other way to interface with the site. I can't browse through a tree, I can't search, there isn't even a nudge for the correct formatting of the model, in case I'm supposed to add or remove dashes, or drop the leading letters, or anything. Let me tell you, that was frustrating.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.

The opening line of Anna Karenina is, "All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is miserable in its own way".

All solvable problems are alike. But each unsolvable problem fails its own unique way. Demanding the UI to know every possible error that could be in the data and find the solution to tell the user what to do next is the classic demand from the management, sales and support engineers who do not really understand how the software works.

All we can do is to validate the data to make sure the next step can be completed. We can provide progress messages and explain to what level we have succeeded. When validation fails, we can explain clearly why the input data is failing validation, and explain the validation test, and why that particular data validation is needed. Then list common reasons why the input fails the validation test, some predicted by the developer, some gathered from the field and past experience. That is all we can do.

If it is possible to predict what should be done next for every failure, then why throw an error message and ask the user to fix it? Can't the software fix it, itself? There are bad error messages, "Data for this linked list is already found in another linked list" is a classic example of horrible error message to be shown to the user. If the user does not understand, "The input solid body solder_ball_VSSC_trace003_net007 in the input is not water tight. Cracks and holes are found in the solid body definition" is a good error message. If the user does not understand that message he/she should go back to school and demand their tuition back.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[tonyyeb]

"Yes but as I'm not a moron I never thought of the user story from your perspective..."

I hope this was intended as a joke in poor taste.

Wind your neck in, yes it was a joke... I only thought it, I never said it to the user in question.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[hendric]

In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.

*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[harperska]

Which is why error messages need to be two-part dialogs. There needs to first be a friendly, clear, non-technical message intended for the end user indicating that something went wrong, it probably isn't their fault, and that they should pass the error on to either their IT staff or the developer (depending on the situation), and second a more technical error message, possibly hidden behind a "more information" button, actually describing what went wrong for whoever the message is passed on to so they can debug the problem.

If the technical error is all that the end user sees, their only reaction will be to mash buttons until they can continue with whatever they were doing, and get mad when that doesn't work.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The Logitech MX mouse, their famous original free-wheeling wireless mouse, cannot be found on their web site without using a very specific search string. This was some years back.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[decep]

Just because you can stick a Pop Tart in a VCR, does not make it a User Experience flaw.

You cannot fix stupid.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[avandesande]

Just because people don't care about tech doesn't make them less than average. The vast majority of most companies depend on bright people that aren't necessarily tech savvy.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to sit in an hour-long meeting because I found a crashing bug. The reason it was an hour long was because the guy who wrote that code essentially insisted that I was stupid for clicking that widget at that time, and that his precious time shouldn't be taken up correcting a problem that only a moron would encounter.

About the fifth time he was telling my boss that no one in their right mind would click, I interjected 'Even accidentally?'

He finally gave in.

And this was in an application where, if it crashes, not only do the people using it lose money on the spot and in the future, but it can cause some very gnarly safety issues.

Did I mention that his code crashed? Reproducibly?

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

That means a lot of attention needs to be paid to User Experience.

On one hand, yes, user experience is important. On the other hand, users are idiots who refuse to learn anything about the most powerful and complex tool that humankind has ever devised. The software world is seriously held back by users failing to catch up to the capabilities of hard- and software. We are wasting far too much time on making trivial concepts more "intuitively usable" because an absolutely astonishing number of users fail to grasp that memorizing a list of buttons to click is not learning how to use computers. There will come a time when everybody whose education mostly consists of episodes of "training" will be replaced by software, because it's cheaper to automate the idiots away than to cater to their inadequacies.</rant>

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[drinkypoo]

*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.

Then it's a crap error message. This is one thing that IBM actually has completely fucking nailed, at least as compared to anyone else. They give you an informative error message and a unique code. The error message is for anyone who happens to be at the keyboard. The code is for techs.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[squiggleslash]

They never pass bit on. It's always "I got a 'Software Fatal Error', what do I do?" "Oh, could you tell me what it said?" "Uh, 'Software Fatal Error'", "No, underneath, where it said something like "Error code 1234", "Oh, I didn't see that bit, I just clicked 'Close Program' and called you".

At one point my then employer and I had a great idea, which we never implemented, that we should show pictures with each error message, so the call would go "Hey, I just used your product, and it showed me a picture of a tree and said 'Software Error'", "A tree? Ah, that means you're out of memory. Might mean a memory leak. Can you tell me what you were doing before you saw the tree..."

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Zerth]

This is why testing should be done after a few drinks.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Registered Coward v2]

Something really hard for some developers to understand is that our peer groups are usually not representative of our user base. We're used to hanging around with really bright people, people who apply logic to questions and use evidence to arrive at conclusions. When we forget that not everyone in the world is like that, we assume that everyone who touches our applications is smart, quick, logical, and willing to read instructions.

True, but they also need to realize that there are really bright people, people who apply logic to questions and use evidence to arrive at conclusion who don't have any interest in coding and or find it boring.

In reality, we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)

By definition, 50% of coders are below average as well.

That means a lot of attention needs to be paid to User Experience. A few years ago we went through our application and made sure that every screen was at a 5th grade reading level. We made sure our users could be trained on the basic functions, features, and processes in less than half an hour. Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.

Very true. Far too often the actual user experience gets overlooked in the drive to create beautiful code. In the end, no matter how beautiful the code is it's still trash if it doesn't meet the user's needs.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Bob the Super Hamste]

At one point my then employer and I had a great idea, which we never implemented, that we should show pictures with each error message, so the call would go "Hey, I just used your product, and it showed me a picture of a tree and said 'Software Error'", "A tree? Ah, that means you're out of memory. Might mean a memory leak. Can you tell me what you were doing before you saw the tree..."

That probably is one of the best ideas I have heard in a while. It would likely give the user something they would remember that would be able to provide useful info.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

50% of our users are literally below the median

FTFY ;)

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[mrun4982]

I've never heard someone make this remark without it being spot on and well deserved, even when I was the one who made the mistake.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[tomhath]

I took it to mean something like a Problem Report which says: "When prompted for a file name I entered five thousand backslashes and it gave me a cryptic error message". Boo hoo.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[sjames]

Remember, some people using your software may not be native speakers. They might appreciate the 5th grade reading level.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[TheReaperD]

I just love it when a PHB tells you the project timeline before you even have a list of requirements. That always ends well.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[TheReaperD]

I really wish sometimes that error messages would add a line: "If you are calling for tech support, please write down this code ERR##### and give it to the technician." I know many would still ignore it but, it would be nice to let the end user know that the tech will need that code in order to assist them. If nothing else, we could tell the people that ignore it that the message said we would need that code to help them and to call us back when they have it.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[shess]

They never pass bit on.

When you say "99% of users never use a feature", then removing that feature makes sense. When you say that "99% of users never report the descriptive error code", and use that as justification to remove the error code entirely, then you guarantee that 100% of users cannot report helpful diagnostic information.

It's super annoying to have a problem with a piece of software, carefully record the details so you can debug things and maybe work towards fixing the problem, only to find that the provided error code is cover for a grab bag of completely unrelated issues. Not quite as annoying as having a reproducible failure case which you can't get across to the vendor because they setup a tech support firewall to protect them from bug reports.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[TheReaperD]

This may sound stupid but, it's actually a sound idea (though you probably, as a company, want people to do this at home for insurance reasons) because end users are not all going to be sober professionals that are familiar with the product. Having the party girl/boy at the front desk test it after a night on the town can really show some odd use cases that will show up once the software is in the wild.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Joe_Dragon]

I know a place that makes (withheld) and some of there latest software is shit lot's of bugs / broken stuff with crash and reboot bugs (embedded system) / settings that don't do any thing (that one was fixed) (but now the default is not the same as that setting acted in the older code).

also seems have to have a lot of cases where variables don't seem to be reset / cleared the right way when in some modes and may be leading to some out range / overflow errors.

Now the testers (not the just having the dev's test there own code) need to have full control over the system as well being able to read the log files as well. Also nice to have people with a QA mind set to do the testing.

I think the lack of real QA testing is leading to bad code as well the marketing rushing it out the door.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[drinkypoo]

Which does nothing if the end user clicks through it in a sub-second and simply complains that "it's broke"

Nature will always build a better idiot, but that's no reason not to try to do something informative for those corner cases where a trained monkey is at the controls instead of a mere feces-slinger.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[PCM2]

I agree with most of your user interface principles, except for the the "fifth grade reading level" one. You might have a point, but I really don't like talking down to grown-ass adults.

Speaking as a professional writer, I don't think you quite grasp the principle.

A while ago, I saw a bunch of conservative commentators mocking the President because his speeches scored (via various accepted algorithms) at an eighth grade reading level. Their take was that he was either an idiot himself or that he thought everybody else was stupid and was condescending to them. On the contrary; his speeches score at an eighth grade level because he has some of the best speechwriters in the business.

Look at it this way, and imagine you're writing copy for a dialog box:

"Touching the active heating element is extremely dangerous and can result in burns." -- Score: Grade 10.4
"Don't put your hand on the stove." -- Score: -0.7

The second version literally scores as sub-zero grade level, meaning ANYONE who can read can understand it. So you tell me. If you used the second version in your dialog box, would you be "talking down to people"?

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[radarskiy]

"we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average "

Half of your peers are below average.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[aix tom]

That's why I love doing mostly in-house development.

There you can just slap a "report this error to help desk" button in your application, that then generates a ticket with the complete relevant information in your ticket system.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Bengie]

we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)

50% are below the median. 80% are below average.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[bozzy]

If the code is able to catch an out-of-memory condition in the first place (as evidenced by the selection of the tree pic for said condition), why didn't the error message just mention "Out of Memory" instead of "Software Fatal Error"?

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Ken D]

You'd certainly confuse me.
I didn't know I was buying a voice activated stove.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[plover]

I agree with most of your user interface principles, except for the the "fifth grade reading level" one. You might have a point, but I really don't like talking down to grown-ass adults.

That's actually when I really learned this lesson. I was opposed to these changes for exactly the same reasons you are, because all I saw was that we were introducing colloquialisms, slang, and generally poor English. I thought "if software ever talked to ME like this, I'd find it offensive." We deployed the new interface, and the clients loved it. The supervisors were able to get people trained quicker, and we received very few complaints. So when I'd call the supervisors about other issues, I'd ask their candid opinions. The people who felt like you and I did were generally older and better educated. But most recognized that our average employees; well, let's say we don't pay college professor wages to the people who operate the software. And a lot of the workers are not native English speakers; for them, the fewer words to interpret, the better. (There are other reasons the interface isn't multi-lingual.)

I've worked on software where I put a lot of thought into describing the error in clear, complete, accurate, and accessible terms, only to be told that the users aren't going to "even bother to read it because it's too long". In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.

We established a lot of rules for our error messages. The first rules were around avoiding as many error messages as possible, because if you can determine the user's intentions, just do it. If you are keeping track of packages going into a truck, and they scan the same package twice, so what? It's obvious they want to put it on the truck, so let it go through. Another rule was that you could only tell them "why" it's an error if it would help prevent repeated occurrences of the error. Our error messages have to be distinctive, so that the busy user don't have to carefully parse every character. The error messages have to be timely; they can't pop up at the end of a workflow because the user might have moved beyond the task that has the problem. And the error messages have to be non-threatening - you need the users to correct the issue and keep moving instead of worrying about their jobs. You don't want them to feel like they'll be punished for making an error; you don't want them to feel like they're being blamed. Just help them.

The last rule is that our error messages can NEVER display an error code. They can only display information that helps the user recover; they are not there for tech support. Average users won't pay attention anyway, and many report the wrong code, especially when there are subtle differences between codes like 80004005 and 80040005. If it comes to troubleshooting, the support staff are perfectly capable of looking at the log files and seeing the correct values of the error codes for themselves instead of relying on reports of dubious accuracy.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[drew_kime]

Holy crap, yes. Someone please do this like yesterday.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

No, but your inability to understand that, by the very definition of "average IQ", 50% of the population will be below that (and if they're not, by definition, the average is adjusted until they are) is a strong indicator that you fall into that category.

Even when 100% of the population is tech savvy and fully understands computers and how they operate both internally and externally, 50% of that population will still have a below-average IQ.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[TheReaperD]

Lucky bastard!

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[QuestorTapes]

Most useful functionality we ever added to one application 20 years ago: when it displayed a MessageBox to the user, it logged the exact text, along with the error code, and offered to email the error report to the support desk.

And the support desk was given a comprehensive manual with instructions on how to guide the user through what they were trying to do.

A friend of mine wrote that function, and I have reused it many times.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Zappy]

I really wish sometimes that error messages would add a line: "If you are calling for tech support, please write down this code ERR##### and give it to the technician." I know many would still ignore it but

That's why you should log the error, I've maintained an application for years and about 98% of the end-users never advanced past the colour of the error dialog when reporting the error, If they even bothered to report the error, because most did not.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[drinkypoo]

A better idea is to always have a rotating debug log that stores error codes and timestamps. It takes up a trivial amount of space.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[dgatwood]

That's why I love doing mostly in-house development.

There you can just slap a "report this error to help desk" button in your application, that then generates a ticket with the complete relevant information in your ticket system.

Lots of companies do that for their public apps, too. It is generally a good practice.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Teun]

I don't know why but you reminded me of goatse...

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[avandesande]

The lower tail of IQ is most likely not represented at your job, so the average iq of people you work with is likely greater than 100. So unless you program for the general population this is not true(even then the 'tail' probably doesn't use computers at all)

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

You do realize that IQ is population-adjusted, right? That is, a given subset of the population has their own IQ baseline. That could be the entire population of the planet as a whole, the US, a single state, a county, a city, a school, an industry, or a single workplace. That means that, yes, within your organization, 50% of the population will have a below average IQ. And, even ignoring that, most developers do, in fact, develop for the general population.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[HornWumpus]

Local and connected logs. Local logs will contain all the errors, database only when connectivity is still good.

Why rotating? As you say it's trivial space.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I think that would be useful for invalid user input.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[david_thornley]

Last time I took an IQ test, they didn't ask which subset of the population I was in, they just gave me a numeric score (along with a lot of discussion of the details, which was far more useful). It's entirely possible to be working in a subset of the population where the average IQ is ten points greater than average, for example.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[tmjva]

My hated favorite is not that they didn't see the code, but they would rather email a 2MB screen shot picture containing the error, than typing that one line of error in the text.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

They were testing against a specific and predetermined subset of the population (e.g. the people who have previously taken their test), then. I know I'm wasting my time providing these links since, if you were actually interested in learning what IQ actually is and how it is actually calculated, you'd have spent the 5 seconds to google it yourself, but, here is the requisite Wikipedia link, as well as one to a more reputable source. In case you're more interested in unreliable and unverifiable sources (which wouldn't surprise me, given your unwillingness to do your own research), here's a Quora question about IQ, as well.

Some highlights:

From Wikipedia: When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less,[2] although this was not always so historically.
(Norming Sample: Synonym for Standardization Sample: a large sample of test takers who represent the population for which the test is intended. This standardization sample is also referred to as the norming group.)

From the MENSA website: Standardized tests, including the tests American Mensa offers, are “normed” to provide a “bell curve” distribution of scores in the general population, with an average (mean) score of 100. Norms are statistics that describe the test performance of a well-defined, broad population. Normed tests compare a person's score against the scores of a large group of people who have already taken the same exam, called the "norming group."

From Quora: Meh. Really nothing useful there, I just figured it might be more your speed.

The point is, a given IQ test is scored against a norming group. In the broader population, IQ tests are normed by age, sometimes also by gender or race; though, if the group you are looking at is too small to be broken into smaller groups (such as, say, the software development industry), the group is taken as a whole.

As for where you can find tests geared toward, say, a specific industry? Simple: take any standardized IQ test, have your sample group take it, then normalize the results.

And, as for the test you took? You might want to find out whose scores you were being compared against, so you know what your score actually means. For reference, my last IQ test, which was very recent, was normalized by age group and geographic location and placed me in the top 5% of Americans age 32-35. The score itself is meaningless as a comparison of my intelligence against yours, unless you also took the same version of the same test and fall into the same norming group as myself.

However, that you couldn't be assed to do a little basic research before opening your mouth (via your keyboard) would indicate that your score on the same test might be much lower than mine. Intelligent people tend to only speak up when they actually know what they're talking about; and, when they speak out of turn, quickly learn from their mistake and admit they were wrong, often thanking the person who corrected them.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

Missed the Quora link. Sorry about that.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Bengie]

IQ is a funny scale. Many people with high IQs are not very intelligent. A simple example is when talking about "common sense". There are many forms of intelligence that IQ cannot measure and all forms of intelligence compound with each other. IQ is correlated enough with intelligence that if you're too far below 100 that you are definitely less intelligent, but not far above 100 is pretty much moot.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Bengie]

apply logic to questions and use evidence to arrive at conclusion

When you start running into hard problems, you can't use evidence because the act of measuring changes the results. When you've reached this point of programming, then you need a really good understanding of theory and an excellent mental model. Try debugging higher performance multi-threaded async code where many errors have no stack traces.

Even more important is being able to debug hypothetical designs in your head to quickly weed out bad designs before you get stuck debugging them.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

Indeed, especially when someone just throws their number out there with no understanding of what it actually means or what group they're actually being compared against. Which I see all the time.

And I'll say, I tend to surround myself with other highly intelligent people; to the point where, though I'm in the top 5% of my demographic, within my circle of friends I'm probably the idiot. That's not by accident, as I rarely choose to befriend people I have to explain things to more than once; I prefer intelligent conversation.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[david_thornley]

You're missing the point. When I took the test, it was undoubtedly compared to a certain group, on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV. Presumably the test designers tried to make it as representative as possible (I didn't find the test group in a quick skim of the Wikipedia article), so that 100 would be close to the average of the population as a whole. This means that the number I was given was supposed to be X standard deviations above the mean for a representative sample of the population in question (I'd assume adults).

There was no norming for my occupation. If every person in this programming group were to take the same IQ test, I'd expect the scores to be uniformly above 100. What avandesande was talking about was that, when you exclude people below a certain level, the average IQ of the rest will be over 100. This is entirely correct.

I don't really like tossing around actual IQ scores, but if the best they could say of you is that you had a higher IQ than 95% of the population you came in considerably lower than me.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

You're missing the point. When I took the test, it was undoubtedly compared to a certain group, on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV.

No, you're missing the point.

Presumably the test designers tried to make it as representative as possible (I didn't find the test group in a quick skim of the Wikipedia article), so that 100 would be close to the average of the population as a whole

Which population? The country in which you took it? The planet? And is that further broken down into age groups, or by gender? Without knowing that, knowing which scale you were measured on is meaningless; the scale and the population (norming group) are two distinct properties of the test, of which you know only one. You can find more information about one specific test using that scale here, where you'll note that the test is valid for ages 16-90 and that the testing and scoring procedures vary by age group (for example, three test sections are not administered to the 70-90 age group).

IQ is a statistical value, any typical variables which might apply to statistical analysis of a population also apply to IQ, demographics and sample size included.

If every person in this programming group were to take the same IQ test, I'd expect the scores to be uniformly above 100.

And, if the scoring is administered properly, it would be renormalized after that sample was added. Sores change over time as tests are further normalized.

I don't really like tossing around actual IQ scores, but if the best they could say of you is that you had a higher IQ than 95% of the population you came in considerably lower than me.

Reviewing the statistics provided for my test more closely, I fall into the scoring group (130-144 for the test I took, a number which may or may not correlate with the test you took, thus why we don't throw those numbers around) which, collectively, scored higher than 97% of test takers in my norming group (again, Americans age 32-35). They do not break down further than that, but I am at the higher end of that range and less than 1% scored above that group. So, the lowest score in that grouping represents the bottom to the top 3%, the lowest score in the next highest grouping represents the bottom of the top 0.7%. I'm somewhere near the top of that range. Not that it really matters, we're still poking back and forth at each other like a couple of idiots; I dare say my intellect allowed me to recognize that sooner than you, however.

Now that I've stated the facts, I will not engage in your pissing contest, especially if you're hell bent on pissing upwind.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[david_thornley]

If you really want to know, my last IQ test came out at 151, in the top thousandth. It's a number. I'm not going to claim that I'm smarter than someone because of it.

However, my programming shop would be a useless norming group. There's no reason to normalize to that. I couldn't find the norming group for Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV in a quick look at Wikipedia, but it's claimed to be valid for people from 16 to 90.

So, if you were to take everyone in my shop and give them a test that reports on that scale, the average would be well over 100.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[BronsCon]

There is no norming group for a given scale, the scale and norming group are two completely different things, which I explained previously (and you could learn for yourself in about 5 minutes of research). The very same test, as I explained (and as explained on the page I linked to regarding what is likely the exact test you took), will apply to several different norming groups (in the case of that test, divided into age groups), all of which will be scored using the same scale.

So, no, if you were to give everyone in your shop a test that reports on that scale, the average would not necessarily be well over 100. It would depend on how it was normalized; if against the general population, yes, it likely would be; however, you could also normalize against just that test group. This is the point you are missing.

The score (and percentile, for that matter) really mean nothing unless you know what group it relates to. If your norming group is global and includes mud-hut-dwellers[1] (before anyone jumps on that, I'm not bringing race into this, there are people of all races who live in mud huts), drug addicts, and the mentally disabled, your score will be higher because they bring down the average. Likewise if the scoring isn't broken down by age (as your test likely was, though you really don't know because you didn't care to ask when you took the test). If, however, as with the test I linked to in my last post, the test splits the mentally handicapped and mentally gifted into their own groups (a score falling into either category is re-scored against an adjusted scale), then further divides into smaller groups by age, your score will be lower, as the lower end of the scale has been removed, adjusting the bell curve downward. Again, this has nothing to do with the scale used and everything to do with the norming group you fall into, which, again, has nothing to do with the scale.

I suggest you read through the details of that test, as it is very likely the one you actually took. Here's a gem that might surprise you:

Q: Why is reliability lower for the intellectually gifted and the intellectually disabled (formerly referred to as mental retardation) special group samples than for the normative sample?
A: It is a consistent finding that the restriction in the range of scores obtained by these groups frequently results in lower reliabilities."

For that particular test (in fact, for that scale), a high or low score is unreliable and indeterminate. I know this isn't what you want to hear (none of what I'm saying is), as it challenges your view of yourself as a highly intelligent being. The thing is, though, that's not at all what I'm trying to do; I'm trying to get you to realize what that test actually means. Your unwillingness to do so only points more strongly to the inaccuracy of the test you took at the upper and lower extremes. Your score of 151 is great, it means you scored higher than 99.9% of some unknown group for which you don't know the demgraphics; yay. It also isn't necessarily higher than my 137, as we were scored on different scales and against different norming groups; again, comparing numbers only means anything when the test, scale, and norming group are identical. I suggest you go find out how norming groups for the test you took are broken down, and which one you fall into, so you can know what your score actually means; it could simply mean you were compared against more impaired people than I was, or it could mean you're actually more intelligent (and for some reason afraid to use that intelligence to understand the test itself).

[1] Not that people who live in mud huts are necessarily less intelligent, but as a whole it can be proven they are.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[MoarSauce123]

Good idea, but the main purpose in my opinion is to prevent the user from having to call someone else for help. Tell the user right then and there what the code expected and what it got and what the most likely means are to circumvent the issue. The dev went through the trouble to catch the error and process it, might as well make it more useful. Companies still want users to call support for help, but for the right reasons. To take the example, "ERR 34: Bad srvc" is not a good reason because it probably does not tell the support rep anything either. Which service? What makes it bad? What does "34" mean?

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[MoarSauce123]

I work in QA and I wish someone, just anyone, would bother to stop by and ask "Did you test this?" If I did then I can show exactly what I tested, how I tested it, when I tested it, and what the test result was. Even if my answer is "No, I did not test this because that case did not come to mind." I'd be glad, because now I can add this test case to my test plan and make sure that this issue does not come up again. Sadly, QA is a line item for many companies that they want to check off on some list, but really don't give a damn what QA does or finds. Bug reports are seen as annoying, petty, hairsplitting noise that some QA underlying only reported to throw a wrench into the release gears. Software businesses are businesses that want to sell as much stuff as quickly as possible. They tend not to care about quality until customers en masse call them out on it. Then out of a sudden the finger pointing and blame game starts with again QA holding the short end of the stick. For that reason I use predominantly email and want any decision in writing and I keep everything. Also, I do not close any bug report that is security related unless a fix was put in place. Others can put their name on it, but I won't answer in court why I accepted the wontfix decision. I also blame customers to some extent. I work on software that sold thousands of copies and so far only one customer asked for test plans and test results as part of the contract. I am really surprised that so many pay a lot of money and do not request any records that show what the test scope and results were.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[MoarSauce123]

AWESOME! I will make sure we credit squiggleslash when we implement this.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Blue23]

In reality, we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)

By definition, 50% of coders are below average as well.

50% of coders are below average compared to other coders. That has no relevance either way if the average for coders is above or below the average for users.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!"

[Registered Coward v2]

In reality, we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)

By definition, 50% of coders are below average as well.

50% of coders are below average compared to other coders. That has no relevance either way if the average for coders is above or below the average for users.

True, but in my experience coder's average is at about the same level as the general population.

The worst of them all...

[Anonymous Coward]

C# developer.

Re:The worst of them all...

[Richard Dick Head]

OK, since this whole story is flamebait...actually "Java developer" would be better there. I mean if you work a job using the busted old training wheels you picked up in college, ya know you might not be the brightest candle on the Titanic. Some related insults...."default parameter", "guppie", "bug mill", "platform whore"...

Re:The worst of them all...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, since this whole story is flamebait...actually "Java developer" would be better there. I mean if you work a job using the busted old training wheels you picked up in college, ya know you might not be the brightest candle on the Titanic. Some related insults...."default parameter", "guppie", "bug mill", "platform whore"...

Hey, some of us C# haters also really hate Java..if I had to rely on 'the busted old training wheels you picked up in college' I'd be coding in 6502...for hardware I'd have built using said beast...
In some engineering circles, 'you program like a computer scientist' used to be 'fighting words'..

Re:The worst of them all...

[TheReaperD]

My favorite is: Where did you learn to code, VB6?

Re:The worst of them all...

[superwiz]

'you program like a computer scientist' used to be 'fighting words'..

That's funny. I always think that people who program like engineers write throw-away prototypes which break the moment requirements change. I am often (but, of course, not always) right.

systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd

All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Does someone, anyone, really *want* to hear *any* insults? Rather than constructive criticism?

Posting as AC, because I'm not that 'special someone'.

Re:All of them

[Flavianoep]

Especially those about their mothers's sexual habits.

Re:All of them

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

One should be grateful for one's mother's sexual habits.

Re:All of them

[RavenLrD20k]

Or those about one's complete misunderstanding of how apostrophes work.

Re:All of them

[Flavianoep]

You're such a grammar n**!

Re:All of them

[TheReaperD]

Your mother fucked VB6 and you were born?

Re:ALL OF THEM

[TheReaperD]

I've been lucky enough to be part of a couple close-knit teams where we went 4chan level just to blow off steam. The big difference is everybody knew and agreed that's what it was and there was no actual intent to insult another member of the team. So, it turned it from a hostile work environment into a fun set of stress-relieving sessions. Of course, we had a meeting about a possible hostile environment with HR because another employee, not on the team, overheard us. The end result was just "keep it down."

Re:ALL OF THEM

[facetube]

If you're starting from the implicit premise that it's okay to insult your employees, then we don't have the same definition of "professional, mature discourse".

Re:Ralph Nader

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoes from the 60s. For that swingin Jack Lord look!

Your mom is so fat

[attwo]

the recursive function computing her mass causes a stack overflow.

Re:Your mom is so fat

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And your mom is so fat she causes a stack overflow even in a language that supports tail-call optimization!

Re:Your mom is so fat

[idbeholda]

she wears a clothing line called "bloatware".

Re:Your mom is so fat

[sjames]

So you're sayin' she's all about dat tail call?

the simplest are the most devastating

[buddyglass]

"You're an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing." Possibly also, "We'd be a more productive team if you just stopped working altogether, even if the company keeps paying you. When you try to contribute it actually creates negative productivity."

Re:the simplest are the most devastating

[dwywit]

"You are a net liability."

Re:the simplest are the most devastating

[buddyglass]

There are plenty of people who are a net negative when you take their salary into account, but the really bad ones are a net negative even if they were working for free. I've only ever run into one or two of those but wow...it was a sight to behold.

Biggest insult...

[Lumpy]

Wow this is microsoft quality!

Re:Biggest insult...

[srmalloy]

Wow this is microsoft quality!

"Did you recycle this code from Microsoft Bob?"

Re:Biggest insult...

[wkwilley2]

Could you make this work as well as Clippy?

Re:Biggest insult...

[Tablizer]

Wow this is microsoft quality!

Reply: Well, you were dumb enough to use them

Re:Biggest insult...

[TheReaperD]

You just had to bring Perl into this didn't you? Some of the best, most unreadable, coders on the planet.

The worst

[tom229]

"You got a little d*ck" is always the worst. Unless you're a female, in which case "you were artificial selected for this job as a matter of affirmative action" would commonly apply.

Re:The worst

[serviscope_minor]

"You got a little d*ck" is always the worst.

Well, not really unless you're insecure about it. It's also not very programmer specific. A better developer insult:

"Can you fix that code your intern wrote?" (Note: there was never an intern, so it's your code)

Re:The worst

[tinkerton]

Have you ever tried telling a woman that she's got a little dick? I'd think twice.

Re:The worst

[TheReaperD]

Yea, she'll just grab and attach a bigger one.

You're a...

[hcs_$reboot]

...C# dev!

Re:You're a...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've spelled PHP wrong.

Re:You're a...

[TheReaperD]

You spelled VB6 wrong.

Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[gachunt]

In the 15 years of my professional career, there's only been one day when I didn't want to come to work.

That was the day after the IT department accused me of intentionally crashing their network, and my Director didn't back me up.

That loss of confidence in my integrity was far worse than any spoken word.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[cloud.pt]

You actually made me think of the worst possible insult you can get from management: "I have lost confidence in your work" (or "the team's work capacity"). When you know a manager's work is to manage expectations and balance work on the team, you know your below acceptable levels when someone high up tells you they can't trust in your work. This is also when you know you won't have much leverage asking for that raise or benefits, pretty much forcing you to switch companies or even career to avoid stagnation.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[davecb]

I resigned from for cause when my management didn't back me up on authenticating a security officer before I discussed our site security with him. The parent company's switchboard, when I called them long-distance on my own nickel, confirmed they had no such person.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is almost a buzzword these days. It is similar to how a teacher says, "I am disappointed in you, Johnny", except just a rephrasing. At least you know when you hear "I have lost confidence in you", you know the zit has popped and it is time to update the resume.

Karma does happen. The last manager who uttered that phrase to me (he was angry because I was limiting the amount of cores a production machine was using because of the RDBMS's license, and he wanted to run a dev instance on the same hardware) wound up himself looking for work because he spent a lot of money on "toys" with his budget... but didn't realize that Microsoft and Oracle take no prisoners come true-up time... and he didn't really pay attention to the fact that by maxing a machine's CPU count meant that 6-7 more digits had to go to Oracle license fees... so he wound up out the door right after me.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[SuperKendall]

I think that's when you leave the company but on the way out let boss of the Bar Boss know the company has a real problem.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[phantomfive]

I resigned from for cause when

What's the difference between resigning for cause and not for cause? Are there tax benefits?

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[edtice1559]

That's when you leave the company but if the Bar Boss hasn't figured it out yet, all your comments are going to do is bring more trouble. Just go quietly. You're gone and don't care what happens to that company. Go somewhere that your work is appreciated and satisfying.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[gachunt]

Karma definitely happened.

When I was hauled into a meeting by I.T., I politely showed them where their developer had err'd, and received embarrassed apologies from them in front of my director.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[davecb]

For cause is vote of no confidence in your management.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[Tablizer]

In the 15 years of my professional career, there's only been one day when I didn't want to come to work...That was the day after the IT department accused me of intentionally crashing their network

I once was accused of sabotaging a project also, so I know the feeling. I argued back, but what I should have done is said in calm but direct voice, "I'm personally and deeply offended by that accusation." and then walked out for the rest of the day.

They probably wouldn't make it an issue with HR because an investigation would have exposed their own incompetence, and they knew it.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I have not heard the term resign for cause. I know "fired for cause" means no unemployment benefit.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[PCM2]

For cause is vote of no confidence in your management.

But who hears the vote after you quit? Your manager?

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[KermodeBear]

I was also accused of breaking replication at a prior job, and I was told that I should have known better.

Well, I did know better - and I wasn't the person who did it. But for some reason the manager had some kind of personal vendetta against me that I never understood, so when something broke, I was constantly the scapegoat.

What really pissed him off even more was when I proposed (usually very easy) solutions to the things that went wrong so that it wouldn't ever happen again. He really, really hated it when, one day, after a bit of Google-fu, I was able to replicate the functionality of his memory-leaked-so-bad-he-had-to-reboot-the-servers-every-night Windows services (it loaded RTF templates into MSWord and turned them into PDFs) with about 10 lines of bash and a few Linux utilities. That's when he really started gunning for me.

Maybe he thought I was trying to kick his sand castle down, but I really was just trying to make things better. What would you rather have? PDFs where each page of the PDF is an embedded image, creating multiple-megabyte documents, or a 35k PDF with actual text? Would you rather have a service that you have to reboot every night because of memory leaks and took half a minute to generate anything, or would you rather have a simple web service that took a second or two and never had to be restarted, thus always being available?

What I wrote was more reliable (less downtime, less money lost), faster (better use of hardware, saves money) and the documents were significantly smaller (far less network traffic and lots of money saved on storage). My reward was a one hour rant in the conference room with the blinds up so that everyone could see and hear what was going on.

It was good in a way, though. I learned a lot about office politics and sociopaths, I learned about the Cover Your Ass style of working, I struck a good work friendship with the CEO (Leonard, I'll miss you, you were a really nice guy) and other higher-ups, and I made sure to make myself as valuable as possible before dropping off my two weeks' notice. I never felt more free in my life than I did the day I quit.

I doubt he'll ever read this (I don't know if he ever reads Slashdot), but Ron M., thank you for being such an asshole. I'm in a much better place now. People respect me and the work that I do at my current company. It's not as interesting, but the people are nicer, the pay is better, and I don't have people screaming at me over things I never did or trying to punish me because I built something better.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[davecb]

The VP Financial.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[davecb]

It's english rather than american (I'm from Canada)

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[PCM2]

I suspected as much. In the US you typically have an "exit interview" where you have the opportunity to vent, if you wish, but I don't know of anything formal you can invoke.

Re:Loss confidence was biggest insult.

[J053]

This. Fairly early in my career, we were having problems with a T1 circuit (yes, it was that long ago) that turned out to be a problem with the way the telco had provisioned the line. My manager at the time had the nerve to ask if we should bring in a consultant because I obviously couldn't fix it. I damn near quit - luckily, that jerk left fairly soon thereafter.

ALL OF THEM

[facetube]

What kind of frat-house development shop are you running? These are the people who are going to help make you successful, not some new pledges to haze. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.

Anything from someone who is better at it than you

[GroeFaZ]

Because there is a high chance they're right.

Insult

[ole_timer]

You read this article? Your code reflects that.

MEDIOCRE!!!

[Aaden42]

All of my code is shiny & chrome.

Re:MEDIOCRE!!!

[Aaden42]

Also, do we all know about @SwearengenCD? He goes a long time between tweets sometimes, but his backlog is hilarious. And close to home some days.

Re:MEDIOCRE!!!

[serviscope_minor]

Will it run eternal on the servers of Valhalla?

Re:MEDIOCRE!!!

[Darinbob]

Shiny and chrome, just like an Edsel.

Re:MEDIOCRE!!!

[xupere]

Witness!!

subpar

[hagnat]

i once created a backend application from scratch, everything homebrew
it was easy to mantain, it was easy to improve, the code was as human readable as the abc
sadly, there were some gotchas : i had to follow some management decisions, the backend didn't validated some features of the application which were to be validated only on the frontend
months later, , a new manager comes in and berates me for the lack of validation of said features, the manager who told me not to said that if the backend wasn't "subpar" it would have been validating it
i quit the same day

ps. there were other reasons for me to quit, the 'subpar' comment was the last straw

Re:subpar

[pr0fessor]

I'm not a full time developer but am sometimes tasked to fix our dev's junk. The last thing they want to hear is someone telling them that I'll be consulting until they are back on track.

They don't like working with me because I'm an "Unknown quantity". {basically I'm more comfortable with c or c++ than whatever angular, jquery, or framework of the moment they happen to be using}

Work for Microsoft?

[Theovon]

It used to be that we could insult someone by implying that they learned to code at Microsoft. Even if they actually worked there.

These days, you can run bash on Windows, so I guess I’ve run out of ideas.

Re:Work for Microsoft?

[inode_buddha]

Ah, those were the days.... here, have some old-school ammo...

"Mac users switching to Linux is PROOF the homosexuality is a choice and it can be cured" ... tho that maybe more troll than insult. Not sure maybe it depends on the forum/context?

Re:Work for Microsoft?

[Falconhell]

*Mac user is all the insult you need. :)

Re:Work for Microsoft?

[HornWumpus]

MacIdiot, pronounced like crap fast food.

Re: Ralph Nader

[johnsmithperson123]

Nah, men were meant to eat meat. Admittedly, not as much as it as we do. But Vitamin B12 proves it.

My personal favorite

[scunc]

This code is so poorly documented that Donald Trump wants to send it back to Mexico!

Re:My personal favorite

[DoofusOfDeath]

This code is so poorly documented that Donald Trump wants to send it back to Mexico!

That's not fair. His beef is with access violations.

You must be making this up

[Latent Heat]

A male, maybe, could get away with speaking of another male worker's genetic endowment.

In my part of the world, the second remark would bring an immediate lawsuit. Heck, they would conduct mandatory polygraph tests to determine if anyone was even thinking that.

Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[fyngyrz]

"You code like a UX designer"

Those are fighting words. :)

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[LocutusMIT]

"You code like a UX designer"

"How appropriate. You code like a cow."

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[umghhh]

place where I come from you get your balls smashed with two big stones for this.
Insults are just part of the trade and I do not care if somebody is calling me an asshole or hiding this behind a wall of words. Personally I am trying to be extremely polite when I encounter a real empty-head. This is because such discussions sooner or later end up at some sort of arbitrage where calling names is not acceptable. This said many insults are not insults per se - on one job I asked a guy whether he actually let somebody test his code or I was first victim - this was enough to be considered offense and bring y ass to management office. It was surely fun especially as I was right.

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[networkBoy]

I'm guilty of similar.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
answer about thinking about security by design
"clearly not, since I can overflow your input right here."
but you shouldn't do that
"and your code shouldn't roll over and die just because of malformed input!"

That landed me in a meeting about sensitivity.
Mind you, this was a public facing API I was criticizing and the dev had rejected the bug I filed on it for this reason.
-nbr

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[Opportunist]

You better be too young to have played Monkey Island (and even that's not an excuse considering you can get it with improved graphics and for cheap on Steam).

Ask me about Loom!

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[xevioso]

Actually, most of the cows I know are outstanding in their field. :-)

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[LocutusMIT]

So, tell me about LOOM.

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Actually, most of the cows I know are outstanding in their field. :-)

Only until you reach a tipping point...

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[Opportunist]

I couldn't do it justice, so I let the master speak.

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[NormalVisual]

That landed me in a meeting about sensitivity.

Yeah, let's see how "sensitive" the customers are when their info gets splashed all over the internet...

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[the_Bionic_lemming]

No need to be polite - Just update their db with a bunch of "instead of" triggers ...

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[HornWumpus]

'Our product would get a failing grade in an undergraduate data structures course.'

Said to the Chinese PhD who 'designed' it.

He fixed the problem by adding indexes all the tables. Typically on 50 character text fields that contained an unicode representation of the long int id from a joined table, but there were exceptions... He had inherited the design skeleton, which wasn't insane, just very simple.

I know better now. The trick would have been to find someone with a PhD in data structures that spoke Cantonese to explain it to him with all the appropriate 'face saving' verbal flourishes. Not my almost German: 'I'll be blunt with you, in private, because I DO respect you...'

The truth is: I don't respect people who can't handle a blunt criticism, still don't. But now look out for the big babies.

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[Lotus456]

Kate Libby: "I hope you don't f^Hscrew like you type!"

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[LocutusMIT]

Geeze, what an obvious sales pitch.

(The Monkey Island series has got to be my favorite game series of all time.)

Re:Insult no programmer wants to hear:

[david_thornley]

Worst problem like that I ever had:

Field engineer: This report isn't working.

Me: Yeah. The SQL behind it is tricky, and I couldn't come up with a better way to do it. Send me a little information and I'll do it for you, because I understand the problems.

Field engineer: I asked someone else and he said the SQL was fine.

Me: It's tricky. I can see what you're using for the query and it won't work that way. It's a really easy mistake to make, because the setup is screwy. Just send me this information and I'll send you back a working query.

Other person, more or less from management: Hi. You're no longer allowed to talk directly to Field engineer, so I'll be mediating things.

"Your code isn't modular enough"

[cloud.pt]

... or "too much POJO usage in detriment of basic patterns". To me, as an OOP developer (Java mostly), this is so much more hurting than any single word/expression criticism. If there's something I don't like is someone to tell me I code like somebody who knows the language basics, has the intellect to get things done, but doesn't know the ways to make it standardized. At the same time it is also something I will look for in a quality developer, so in practice I'm only really offended by others saying stuff like that because I see it as an actual flaw. So there's that.

Why are you not putting in 60-80 hours a week?

[Joe_Dragon]

Why are you not putting in 60-80 hours a week?

Apu does and we don't even pay as much as you.

Re:Why are you not putting in 60-80 hours a week?

[HornWumpus]

If I see a manager that wants that much time, I have no doubt about their incompetence.

The only way they have to measure programmers is face time. Just leave.

BeauSD

[Pikoro]

Sorry, but so far, almost every story posted by BeauHD has been completely irrelevant. Perhaps SD is better than HD? Either way, all his posted stories don't belong on this site. They're all click bait.

Re:BeauSD

[AmiMoJo]

What's with the Stack Exchange phrasing in the headline too?

For those who don't know, you can't ask direct questions like "What is the worst insult a developer doesn't want to hear?" on Stack Exchange sites. They get closed for some bullshit reason, so you have to phrase them in this silly way. For example, "what is the best tool for doing x" has to be mangled in to "what are some good tools for doing x" to avoid deletion.

Re:BeauSD

[david_thornley]

Stack exchange sites are for questions that have verifiable answers. If you want to set up a competing site with different criteria, go ahead.

"What is the best tool for X?" normally doesn't have a verifiable answer. "What are some good tools..." does have a verifiable answer, in that the tools can be checked to see if they're good, and you can read the answers to get a good idea as to what might be best suited for you.

Re:BeauSD

[AmiMoJo]

It's just semantics. You could check if the software could reasonably called the "best", using the criteria of the questioner and the reasoning of the answerer. But no, you have to phrase it slightly differently and end up doing the same verification and getting the same answer.

You've never used our product, have you?

[bruce_the_moose]

From a sr. developer delivered directly to the face of another developer who had been at the company a few years.

Reverse insult

[petes_PoV]

Something that a lot of developers seem to take pride in, but which is really at the root of unprofessionalism is
Wow, your code is so complex I can't understand it.

Re:Reverse insult

[MobyDisk]

I'm not sure which way this goes.

A good developer takes pride in writing the simplest code possible to solve a problem. If another developer cannot understand it, is the problem the reviewer, or the coder?

Re:Reverse insult

[werepants]

A good developer takes pride in writing the simplest code possible to solve a problem. If another developer cannot understand it, is the problem the reviewer, or the coder?

Define "simplest". Many developers take it to mean the fewest possible lines of code, which is often anything but simple or legible. Much better to write something in 10 lines that is verbose and can be grokked immediately than something in 5 lines that relies on obscure features of the language or non-obvious logic.

Re:Reverse insult

[jareth-0205]

I'm not sure which way this goes.

A good developer takes pride in writing the simplest code possible to solve a problem. If another developer cannot understand it, is the problem the reviewer, or the coder?

I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault. It's far safer (and more likely to be correct) to assume that the failure is with the speaker than the listener, and I think the same goes for code. Not all code is necessarily easy to understand, but if it isn't then it should be well documented. And if you think the problem is the reviewer then you really shouldn't be getting it reviewed, because you don't care or trust what they say anyway.

Re:Reverse insult

[l3v1]

"I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault. It's far safer (and more likely to be correct) to assume that the failure is with the speaker than the listener, and I think the same goes for code."

I'm sorry, but I find that stupid. That logic implies that if you have to work with dumber people then you need to become dumber, which is crazy. If you actually work in such an environment, you'd better leave, fast. There can be occasions in large cooperative works when more easily understandable (i.e., faster to understand) code is more preferable, of course, but I don't see value in setting the level of "understandability" to the level of the idiots. If someone doesn't understand, I prefer "teaching" than lowering my standards.

Re:Reverse insult

[tepples]

I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault.

"This code uses a Patricia trie..."
"What's a Patricia trie? And don't tell me to go look it up on Wikipedia."

Does this mean that every program using a well-known algorithm or data structure needs to contain a copy of the complete description of the algorithm or data structure that requires only CS101 to understand?

Re:Reverse insult

[istartedi]

Otherwise known as the Job Security Application. Perl was the language of choice for that back in the day. You can write JSAs in most languages though. The JSA authors goal is achieved when he over-hears somebody saying, "We can't let him go. He's the only one who understands the code that glues our business together".

Re:Reverse insult

[swsuehr]

I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault.

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you please explain again?

Re:Reverse insult

[jareth-0205]

Just because you are clever at programming does not mean you are good at communicating. They are separate skills and it's quite possible that you (or 'one') suck at communicating with other people. There is not one single axis of "clever" that everybody resides on.

Re:Reverse insult

[jareth-0205]

In that case looking it up is a fair answer, you've clearly communicated what something is, and the receiver just doesn't know what that thing is so they need to go look it up. There's no lack of understanding here, just a lack of domain knowledge.

Re:Reverse insult

[jareth-0205]

I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault.

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you please explain again?

Oh - touche.

Re:Reverse insult

[david_thornley]

I didn't know what a Patricia trie was when I read it, and had to find out from Wikipedia that it's a trie with constant branching factor of two. (I do know what a trie is.) Some of us haven't taken CS101 in a long time, and when I took it there was no mention of Patricia in reference to tries. Write comments according to who's going to read them, and a few sentences of quick description is better than sending 20% of your readers to Wikipedia. (I had a similar problem in mathematics - I could remember theorems, how to prove them, and how to use them, but not necessarily that it was X's theorem.)

Not an insult, but

[Builder]

My least favourite word in the English language is just. "Just do ...", or "It's simple, just..."

You hired me for my expertise and the quality work I deliver. I have a track record with this firm spanning several years of high-quality delivery and being right about nearly every technical and process call I've made. But feel free to walk in and denigrate all of that value by telling me to just ...

Re:Not an insult, but

[RabidReindeer]

It's the most fatal phrase in IT: "It's Simple! All You Have To Do Is..."

AYHTDI is repeated endlessly by people who think that because Little Johnny can write a program to make a block move back and forth on the screen that a Little Johnny could recreate EBay in a day.

Well, Little Johnny is a Boy Scout with a First Aid merit badge and we're scheduling him to do your liver transplant next Thursday.

Re:Not an insult, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Use to work at a place where our product owner would say "I can do that in Access in about 20 minutes." Our manager finally grew some nads and started telling them to feel free, we would be working on something else until they decided they need us again. We were instructed that if we heard that phrase again we should say OK and leave the meeting immediately. Was kind of fun the few times I got to do this.
The same guy had read access with SQL to the production database. He started causing issues by inadvertently locking tables and it prevented the actual users from working. Manager got sick of us cleaning up these contention issues for him. We couldn't take away his access, but we could restrict it. So we restricted his access to a 30 minute window at midnight every night. He wasn't happy but all the people that worked for him on the system were very happy :)

The one I dread

[Rik Sweeney]

"Hey look! Your code snippet is today's featured article on The Daily WTF!"

Re:The one I dread

[TheReaperD]

Wow, that's cold. That may be my new personal favorite.

no news is good news

[Thud457]

No developer ever never ever wants to have Linus critique their code.

Re:no news is good news

[BlackPignouf]

Why would that be? Because you're a diva, you think you're the best coder ever and don't have anything to learn anymore? It might hurt your ego?
Grow a pair and accept constructive criticism. I'd take harsh but constructive feedback from Linus anyday, he's one of the most succesful coders on Earth right now. Why wouldn't you want to get some input from him?

Re:no news is good news

[Penguinisto]

Dude, you kidding? I'd *kill* to get some of his time to go over the stuff I write!

Why? Because I'd frickin' *learn* from it, that's why...

Seriously - never fear honest criticism from people who are way better at it than you are.

Re:no news is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, If Linus Would comment anything about my codes it means i have reached some sort of new professional level. It takes time and skills to write code the goes throw entire chain of kernel developers utill Linux sees it...

Re:no news is good news

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Generally if Linus is railing on you about something, it's ...

... because you've done something braindead stupid.

Re:no news is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing Linus has speaking for him is that he gives constructive criticism.
When he tells you that your code is crap he will tell you why it is crap, how your poor thinking resulted in you writing that code and how you should have written the code instead. He also includes why it should be written that way.
Most people just tell you that the code sucks but doesn't show how it should be done instead.

What Linus doesn't do is preserve your ego. When it comes to that Linus is a bit more on the destructive side.
Luckily people who feel the need to protect their ego usually ends up becoming better persons when it is destroyed.

Re:no news is good news

[OrangeTide]

No amount of skin will protect you from the road rash that is the LKML.

Re:no news is good news

[Bengie]

Divas are a dime a dozen, but excellent programmers are unicorns.

I kid because I love

[PopeRatzo]

So, a developer went to the doctor, he said, "Doctor, what's wrong with me?"

Doctor: "You're fat.".

Developer: "I want a second opinion."

Doctor: "OK, you're ugly, too."

"Flip the Bozo bit".

[toonces33]

Said in reference to someone who has said or done something exceedingly stupid. But the real meaning is that anything that they say or do in the future will not be taken seriously since they are now regarded as a bozo.

Re:Ralph Nader

[Anonymous Coward]

"You should be eating a vegetable-based diet as opposed to a meat-based diet"

Provably false. Compare your intestinal tract to herbivores and carnivores and you find that ours is longer than most carnivores but not nearly as long as herbivores (compared to hard core herbivores, we only have 1 stomach!). Examine our teeth and we have a mix of crushing teeth that herbivores have, but also sharp tearing teeth that carnivores have. Our eyes are in the front of our head giving us excellent depth perception necessary for hunting just like carnivores. If you look at it objectively from how we've evolved, we're clearly omnivores meant to eat a mix of plant matter and animal matter.

Also, you should consider actually going to the US before making misinformed comments. My local grocery store, probably about a third of it is dedicated to the produce section, with another third dedicated to deli/bakery. And it's not some high end store either, it's Kroger.

Re: Bullshit

[Applehu Akbar]

This story made it, and the story about Elsevier's war on Sci-Hub didn't?

Here's one that really gets under their skin

[American AC in Paris]

"Programmers who hurl insults at each other like to think it's because they're honest, no-nonsense efficiency machines that get things done. The reality is that they never bothered to learn how to interact effectively with other human beings, and that deficiency is typically far more detrimental to their professional lives than they realize."

Re:Here's one that really gets under their skin

[PPH]

never bothered to learn how to interact effectively with other human beings

The API documentation sucks.

Re:Here's one that really gets under their skin

[jdavidb]

I'm a convert to that belief.

Re:Here's one that really gets under their skin

[jdavidb]

One of the most educational movies I ever watched was John Candy in Only the Lonely with Maureen O'Hara. O'Hara plays Candy's controlling mother who is disrespectful beyond belief to nearly everyone in her life. She justifies herself by saying she "tells it like it is" and "says what needs to be said." Of course the truth is a jerk and she ruins lives, or at least makes them much less happier than they could otherwise have been.

Even if you don't learn anything from it, at least the disrespect is entertaining. I'll say one thing for disrespectful insults - at least they are entertaining! :) But spoken out loud or in the wrong context they are nuclear weapons.

Re:Here's one that really gets under their skin

[Kjella]

"Programmers who hurl insults at each other like to think it's because they're honest, no-nonsense efficiency machines that get things done. The reality is that they never bothered to learn how to interact effectively with other human beings, and that deficiency is typically far more detrimental to their professional lives than they realize."

I'm sure Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds agree it totally ruined their lives. To use a car analogy, there's people at work like:

They: "Let's build a flying car!"
Me: "What?"
They: "It's a great idea, people can fly around like on the Jetsons"
Me: "Sure, but it doesn't work in practice."
They: "I'm sure it would, just crossbreed an airplane with a helicopter"

At which point I could a) argue rationally for a few hours why this is total insanity in terms of engineering, cost, legislation, noise pollution, flight logistics, fuel efficiency, pointing out failed attempts and so on or b) "This is fucking stupid and a waste of everyone's time that only a moron would think is a idea we need to develop, let's just kill it stone dead right now." And sadly they'd have all the plans drawn up about who'd benefit from flying cars and all the marketing check boxes it should check and how you would do the roll-out, but fuck all on how to make one.

I try not to abuse people for simply making mistakes, I'm not without faults myself either. But if you think you can just crap all over the code and expect other people to clean up your mess then no, you're going to get a good chewing out. Or when you're obviously not doing your job but just repeatedly handing off obvious crap to me because I'll fix it up using me like some kind of doormat. Of course I could go the formal route, but really... you want me to? Because I can't just go whining to my boss, I'd have to ask him to step in and do something. If you're called into a meeting with your boss because "somebody" is unhappy with your work performance, I think the work environment would get a lot more hostile than a few harsh words.

Sure, I try not to get personal but it's pretty hard to critique a work without it implying something about the person who did it. If the code is sloppy, you've been sloppy. If your code doesn't work, you failed. If your code broke the system, you screwed it up. Some people will take everything as an attack on their person and use any fringe excuse about the form and tone than addressing the core problem, that you're not delivering to professional standards. If I am being impolite, it's usually because I've tried being polite and it didn't work.

Not sure why would I want to insult devs...

[mlts]

People have very long memories, especially in the career department when their house, and food for their family is on the line. Wisecracking about devs in general in IT is one thing. Insulting people to their face or their manager's face is not exactly a very wise career move.

Plus, devs have heard it all. They have heard they can be replaced by offshore dev houses, H-1Bs, monkeys, or almost anything. They are not going to perform any better when someone continues to compare them with inanimate objects or people in a persistent vegetative state.

To boot, there may be a good chance that the college intern or H-1B fresh off the boat that is the brunt of insults this week may be one's manager the the next week after a corporate reorg or a buyout.

Having a bug named for you

[bruce_the_moose]

We call an assignment vs equality error a "Deepak". As in, "oh look, right there, you pulled a Deepak".

Re:Anything from someone who is better at it than

[lysdexia]

It's even better when you are pushing 50 and they are about 24. Owie.

And not a Draeni

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Your penis is kind of small."

Oh, wait. He wants to hear this because it means he's finally gotten with a girl.

Re:And not a Draeni

[mwvdlee]

because it means he's finally gotten with a girl.

It probably means the doctor is about to suggest an alternative treatment.

Re:What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Insults are the first refuge of the insecure. I'm not talking Torvalds-style insults of the code, I'm talking about when they insult you.

Bad code deserves insults, although not all insulted code is bad, since people will insult good code as an indirect insult of the coder, which is completely different.

Flaming people in order to build oneself up by putting other people down is at least as old as the Internet, but it's not conducive to better coding - it's more likely to drive away people who could potentially be valuable contributors.

Because of that, there is at least one online forum (coderanch.com) whose primary purpose is to allow people to ask stupid questions with the assurance that they won't be flamed.

Re: Your mom is so technology illiterate

[Anonymous Coward]

she thinks Apple is a tech company.

Re:What do you mean, budget and staff?

[RabidReindeer]

That's right. It's Simple! All You Have To Do Is...

Insults? Not so much. Enragers? Plenty:

[Qbertino]

Pet Enragers:

- It's all finished, just needs to be programmed.
- Can't you just write a three-liner and fix this?
- That's not important for the requirements, that's just technical stuff.
- Why is this taking so long? My nephew can do this in two days.
- I need the image in 300dpi (web development, where print resolution means squat).

Re:Insults? Not so much. Enragers? Plenty:

[mwvdlee]

I need the image in 300dpi (web development, where print resolution means squat).

Webpages can be printed. If your website has images on it, they may need to be at a higher resolution than displayed on screen, so they will print out well.
It always enrages me when people can't imagine use-cases beyond their own experience ;)

Re:Insults? Not so much. Enragers? Plenty:

[wvmarle]

dpi means nothing without dimensions: a 300x300 image is 300 dpi when printed an a postage stamp.

Re:Insults? Not so much. Enragers? Plenty:

[mwvdlee]

If you use CSS to define the image as a 2x2 inch image, you get 300dpi by making it 600x600 pixels. Your printer should be able to handle this as intended, though your screen will probably not.

You are right that DPI means nothing without dimensions, but dimensions aren't a problem. CSS is perfectly capable of defining sizes by real-world units such as inches or centimeters. On paper and even on screen (assuming your browser doesn't try to outsmart the CSS, as most non-desktop browsers try to do).

Then again, few websites bother at all to define how their website should look printed out.
Just look at how utterly unreadable Slashdot looks in the print preview.

Specifying an image for a website to be 300dpi is uncommon, but it's certainly not unreasonable if you care about printability.

Re:Insults? Not so much. Enragers? Plenty:

[mwvdlee]

Go tell Google, Opera, Apple, Mozilla and Firefox to remove the print option; they're letting their users use the internet wrong!
Google Maps; you're doing it wrong!
Printable tickets: you're doing it wrong!
Purchase receipts: you're doing it wrong!
Cheat sheets; you're doing it wrong!

Resource

[neo00]

RESOURCE!

I agree with the article on that one. A word that is often used to dehumanize people.

If a project is late, we can just "throw in more resources"!

One of my co-workers was once told by the business product owner to get her application finished in unreasonable time. When he expressed his concerns, she basically told him that she would replace him any time with a bunch of "developers from the street" who would get the job done faster than him.

We're Going With Webs.com

[Jason Levine]

I built a website for my Synagogue, donating my time and effort. Then, they had some staff turnover. I tried to meet with the new administrator to talk about future work on the site and was told "Oh, we're not using that site anymore,I know how to make websites so I'm going to do it." Of course, by "knows how to make websites", he meant he opened up a Webs.com account, used their drag and drop tools to put together a few pages, and gave everyone that address. My skills in custom coding a website to the exact needs of the organization were replaced with "here's a WYSIWYG that lets anyone be a web developer!" (And, yes, I hate those Wix.com ads. You are NOT a web developer if how you "develop websites" is by loading up Wix.com!)

You code like a writer for Infoword

[rumpledoll]

Turgid and redundant

Re:Time for you to move into management

[RabidReindeer]

Ironically, it generally seems that I don't spend all that much time - relatively speaking - on the big, deep tech issues.

Where most of the project time gets eaten up is in the stupid little ordinary details. It's not uncommon to lose nearly 2 whole days because of a slipped comma or a dash where there should have been an underscore or a mismatched quote.

A lot of times, it doesn't take a technical wizard to spot such stuff, just someone who isn't seeing what should be there, instead of what is there. That's why it's important that you can rely on constructive criticism, not insults. If I'm going to have my basic competence called into question just because I can't type straight, I'm far more likely to spend the extra time spinning my wheels doing it myself.

Re: Ralph Nader

[silentcoder]

Found Jenny McCarthy.

You are a hamster

[Rinikusu]

and your code smells of elderberries.

I'm only a hobby dev

[Dunbal]

But this one is straight from med school. From Dr. O., may you rest in peace. When anyone shows "initiative":

"There's nothing worse than a fool with initiative"

Everyone hated rotating with him. I actually had a nice time :)

Re:I'm only a hobby dev

[drinkypoo]

"There's nothing worse than a fool with initiative"
Everyone hated rotating with him. I actually had a nice time :)

No initiative, eh? ;)

Re:I'm only a hobby dev

[neurovish]

But this one is straight from med school. From Dr. O., may you rest in peace. When anyone shows "initiative":

"There's nothing worse than a fool with initiative"

Everyone hated rotating with him. I actually had a nice time :)

The TA who taught my semiconductors class would often tell us we had a future in sales whenever we go things very wrong.

Suck and suck less...

[__aaclcg7560]

My six-month internship as a software tester was for the WorldsAway virtual world at Fujitsu in 1997-98. I came across a graphic bug that I wrote up with the word "suck" to describe the problem. The artist/programmer made a fix and marked the bug as fixed. I reported back that the graphic "sucked less" than before and re-opened the bug. The artist/programmer immediately came over to ream me out for using the word "suck" in a bug report. After he left, my boss looked at me and said, "Damn, you're good! He usually ignores QA."

There's a free iPhone app that can do that

[JoeyRox]

Ugh.

Re:There's a free iPhone app that can do that

[An ominous Cow art]

Sorry, accidental downmod. Posting to undo.

*silence*

[mwvdlee]

The worst insult is when somebody submits a bug report, you fix it or ask for more information and then they never reply again.
If somebody throws an insult at you, it at least means they cared enough about the project to spend time on it.

Words like "fanboi" and "n00b" aren't proper insults.
Whoever uses those kinds of words merely demonstrates their own incomprehension.
Otherwise they would have made substantive arguments.

Re: Bullshit

[NeutronCowboy]

This story is exhibit A why I haven't been to the site in over a year. It's not only completely contentless, it's insulting, stupid, and not even funny.

Re:What?!

[bev_tech_rob]

"Insults are the first refuge of the insecure" - not necessarily. When I'm the one who has to clean up someone's else fucked-up shit - AGAIN, I'm not always going to be nice about.
Especially when they're doing it THE WRONG FUCKING WAY. Again, for the 10th time, when they've been told how NOT to do it.

Careful, someone who doesn't take kindly to those remarks might want to have a private meeting with you in the parking lot, kicking the shit out of you.

Being ranked lower

[ZeroSerenity]

One of the biggest insults I've ever gotten is after ten years of this job being called a "Junior". Uh...

Gay

[ShieldW0lf]

This branch is gay. It'll never be merged into the trunk and propagated.

Real flame

[RetiredMidn]

I'm old enough to have worked with paper-based bug tracking systems.

On one project I worked on, there was a protracted feature vs. bug debate between a developer and the QA manager. The QA manager made a "final" declaration that the "feature" needed to be fixed, crammed into what little space was left in the bottom right corner of the bug ticket.

The ticket was returned once more with that corner burned off.

Re: Bullshit

[tinkerton]

It's also less than 1/1000 of the stories posted on /. in a year and you just pick that one to comment on!
But I agree Slashdot has quality issues.

Not Really An Insult

[StormReaver]

For a long time, I would get very dismayed at the reaction of my users when I spent hours (or days or even weeks) working on a complex problem, and they would respond with, "that's it?" when I demonstrated it to them. Those were cases where my presentation lasted a minute or two after a long, blood-stained battle with algorithmic logic. At the end of the presentation, everyone was experiencing an anticlimactic sense of, "how do we fill time now that the presentation is over?" It was borderline depressing, and a bit insulting. There was no praise for all the hard work I put into it.

Then I started looking at it from a different perspective. My job is to make my users' jobs easier. When they look at my work and say, "That's it?" they are really saying, "this is too good to be true, but it is true." Eventually, they confirmed that they indeed were expecting something much harder to use, and were stunned to see so much useful functionality packed into such an easy to use interface.

"You don't test your code!"

[mark-t]

For myself, that's the worst one... largely because it isn't even true. I endeavor to test everything I write before committing it to the repo, but I know I don't think of everything... including, unfortunately, the very first things that my boss's boss apparently tries to do with whatever I've written whenever he gets a new binary, leaving them with little impression but to think that any testing that I may have done was obviously too cursory to qualify as even the most rudimentary verification of code stability and correctness. What I've had to do is simply learn to think more like how he likes to do during first tests.... which isn't easy at all, and does not come naturally, but as I've been learning, the number of complaints has been steadily dropping, and I haven't heard that remark about my code in over a year now.

Re:Not a problem anymore

[mlts]

In some workplaces, this may not be the case. If someone who is extremely clued gets sick or burns out, the amount of stuff that everyone else has to do increases by a substantial amount. Even if it just a person who adds DNS entries and makes sure they resolve, having that wind up going to someone else may make or break things, especially if everyone has a full load of stuff they are doing.

It is wise to expect nothing in a work environment, but on the other hand, looking out for a co-worker might save one a lot of time and aggravation in the long run.

Did you think that the FBI was stupid?

[mbone]

What were you thinking of? Did you think that the FBI was stupid?

Your marketing materials suck

[RogueWarrior65]

Uh...yeah, we're engineers, not salespeople.

Yes it is

[s.petry]

A great way of expressing frustration and reducing tension is with humor. THese types of threads are intended to express humor and blow off steam.

contrary to your assertion, the world does not and should not bow down to your personal biases. Don't like the thread, don't read it. Don't care for snark, satire, or any other genre of humor don't listen. Sit and "be positive", just out of earshot if sound bothers you.

Thinking positive and praising is a good thing to do when it's appropriate, but it often is not.

The best ones are from one Slashdotter to another

[Walking The Walk]

For example, posted two hours ago:

Wow, this much hubris and you don't understand confidence intervals worth shit.

Re:Sticks and Stones may break my bones

[dave420]

It's more about getting cold hard criticism of one's work than being insulted. Do you conflate those in your head? Ouch.

Re:What?!

[umghhh]

This is true. However after 30y in the trenches I must say some people just do not understand a polite request for clarification why they do and calling them stupid assholes may have a waking up quality. It is indeed true however that after I passed that stage I noticed that this does not bring anything either as empty heads stay empty heads. I resolve to two queries - second just to ensure that empty head is empty head. Discussion is obsolete anyway.

forget it i'll do it

[trybywrench]

Once I was a junior dev and went to a very busy Sr. Dev for a question on some code i didn't understand. His reply was "..just forget it, i'll do it" i was pretty crestfallen.

Write-only code

[DougDot]

A colleague seem insulted when it was claimed that he produced write-only code.

Faint Praise

[avandesande]

'Well at least it's consistent'

Why so negative?

[Xenna]

Let's look at the positive side for a change...

Only yesterday I got this compliment from a fellow developer on the other side of the world:

This is truly a beautiful work of programming you have put together!

I'm still glowing and more motivated than ever ;-)

(Give a deserved compliment now and then and keep open source going)

Re:Why so negative?

[Kyont]

Right, let's lift each other up, everyone's got enough troubles without enduring unprofessional insults at work! Coding at any larger scale is a team effort.

Though to stick with the theme here, it can turn ugly... "Wow, great job on the Client X code! We're promoting you to Project Manager!" NNOOooooo....

Management comments

[Verdatum]

Wow! Code like this, you should be in management!

Re:Ralph Nader

[kimvette]

More accurately, Sanders would take about 40% of the shoes beyond the 100 and give them to the poor, college students, etc. and it will be less oppressive than it used to be in the USA because there is no way the top marginal rate will go back to >90%. It should, but it won't.

"Over-engineered"

[JoeDuncan]

What the hell is this? Are you building a solution, or a solution framework?!?

Lazy, old, young, out of touch, un-professional

[davidwr]

Granted, sometimes these can be compliments but when they aren't they can really hurt the target.

They can also hurt the reputation of the people using them and overall team productivity. When that happens, it can hurt the careers of the whole team including the team's direct managers.

Dilbert

[m.alessandrini]

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-...

"Sigh. Here, I'll just fix it."

[mveloso]

You don't have to insult them. Just do their job for them and they'll get the point.

Re:"Sigh. Here, I'll just fix it."

[PCM2]

You don't have to insult them. Just do their job for them and they'll get the point.

Having edited (read: rewritten) countless manuscripts in my time, with no reaction from the writer other than "Looks great!", I can assure you this is not the case.

Re:"Sigh. Here, I'll just fix it."

[drainbramage]

You are 100% correct, if not more so.
I have cow-workers that I have enabled to show up late, take 2 hour lunches, and leave early.
They are perfectly happy showing me their failed code and have me fix it.
I do the work, they get the credit.
If I point out that I deserve credit for finally getting the thing wotking the word I hear most often is "Trivial".
My fault for allowing it, would like to finf a manager that cared though.
In fact my manager says "No one can be abused without their consent".
It's a real learning experience for me.

Re:"Sigh. Here, I'll just fix it."

[complete loony]

No. No they won't.

That's the point when I will stop helping someone. When it feels like every time they ask for my help, they don't retain anything. Sure sometimes it's easier to explain some language feature by quickly typing an example. But if I end up writing most of the code to solve your assigned tasks on your keyboard, and you don't seem to be learning anything, why do you work here again?

Re:"Sigh. Here, I'll just fix it."

[bozzy]

And the credit.

Re: Anything from someone who is better at it than

[Lodragandraoidh]

In my domain - no. However, there are plenty of coders better than me in other arenas. If you are better than everyone at everything - then you are really something special.

Retina display

[tepples]

I agree with your first four pet enragers. As for the fifth:

I need the image in 300dpi (web development, where print resolution means squat).

What's the pixel density of an iPad mini tablet with Retina display? Wikipedia says 326 dpi.

"There's this thing they teach in Comp Sci"

[tim.m.holt]

Younger Developer (enthusiastically): "There's this thing they teach in Comp Sci" Me: "I have a degree in computer science"

Re:Not a problem anymore

[sjames]

Have you considered the possibility that your attitude is self fulfilling?

Consistency is important

[TheReaperD]

Yes, they try to give feedback about readability and code style and they should. Yes, your code is likely perfectly correct and works fine. If you were writing an app yourself or some small solo programming project, that would be fine. But, in today's world, dozens or hundreds of people work on a coding project and dozens will have to read it and edit it years later with no one from the original team being available to walk them through it. This means that coding styles and conventions become important so other members of your team and future teams can understand what the hell you wrote and be able to edit it. I don't even want to imagine updating code for a project with a team of 20 that everyone wrote in their own style with their own personal shortcuts; it sounds like a specialized circle of hell. This is where you end up with things like certain Symantec products where there is an original core code blob that no one can understand or edit nor is there anyone from the original product working for the company to help edit it so they have to put rings of code to modify that core blobs output to work with the new layers of the product. Yes, I've dealt with this; not as a coder but, as a professional trying to figure out why their product was breaking when Symantec themselves didn't know as they couldn't access the problem code.

Re:Consistency is important

[sysrammer]

"I don't even want to imagine updating code for a project with a team of 20 that everyone wrote in their own style with their own personal shortcuts; it sounds like a specialized circle of hell."

You're absolutely right, and it's a big reason why nobody does that, no matter how it's written. They find adaptors of some sort, written in a future language-du-jour, to get the data/reports/screenshots into the future framework-du-jour.

Re:Consistency is important

[TheReaperD]

There's places in the world for both and both are needed. I'm not trying to devalue either skillset. Most programmers are either built to be a cog in a team or a solo developer. The ones that can comfortably jump between both skillsets are the unicorns of the industry. Usually where you have the teams break down like that is because of poor product management or management in general. This is doubly backed by the fact you stated this happens repeatedly. If teams fail over and over again, the problem is always those in charge. (Even if it is caused by bad employees, it's still management's fault for not removing said problem people.)

Re:Consistency is important

[Bengie]

Takes all kinds. I know I like to work on infrastructure related work. In an overly simplified description, I am a force multiplier and enable other programmers, but without them, I am not nearly as useful. Symbiotic.

Re:Did you unit test it?

[MadKeithV]

Depending on the build process what the dev calls "compiling" may have run the unit tests as well. That's certainly how I like to have things set up.

Conway's Second Law

[sconeu]

In every organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

Re:What?!

[sjames]

Since you said AGAIN, that implies that the insults were not your first refuge. Perhaps they're the first refuge of the insecure and the 4th refuge of the fed-up.

Re: I cringe at ...

[TheReaperD]

Especially if it's true. I wrote a script once that did MY entire 8 hour job in 10 minutes. Then I made the mistake of telling management. I was still young and know better now.

Re:Arrogant Asshat

[BronsCon]

Speaking of arrogant asshats...

If the program generates a fault, it's because a human wrote it. Error messages describing a fault are for the person the user calls for help. One could argue that they're for the user to read to the person the user calls for help, but that's just semantics; they're ultimately for the person the user calls for help, then, for the developer tasked with fixing the issue (and introducing two more).

I dare say if your code is perfect, you've not got enough people looking at it. And if your programs never generate faults, you don't have enough users.

Not sure about Developers. . .

[Salgak1]

. . . . but the ultimate Unix/Linux burn is:

"You can be replaced by a VERY small shell script. . . "

Why Don't We Just...

[W. Justice Black]

IME, nobody who's ever been asked a question beginning with "Why don't we just..." has ever been happy to hear it.

IME, nobody who's ever asked a question beginning with "Why don't we just..." has ever liked the answer.

Code Monkey

[azadrozny]

Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
But his output stink
His code not functional or elegant
What do Code Monkey think?

Re:Insults no programmer wants to hear

[TheReaperD]

Still better than a Symantec programmer.

There's spaghetti code

[Oligonicella]

and then there's Ramen Noodles.

Overheard uttered by someone trying to figure out another's literally (not figuratively) 40+ page procedure paragraph.

Re:Ralph Nader

[Oligonicella]

Thank you Vegan warrior. Now piss off. Why? "... their grocery stores seem not to sell vegetables as I understand it, ..." You do not understand it, and yet you flap your yap.

learn to X

[superwiz]

"learn to..." usually means that someone has not reached a point in their cognitive development where they realize that people specialize in what they do and are not idiots because they don't specialize in what the person hurling the insult does. Coming to appreciate the fact that smart people still don't know everything is often a slow grinding process. This insult is an indication of frustration that someone is present in the context with which they are not fully familiar. Each context has its own set of known facts and its own (often idiosyncratic nomenclature). Confusing someone new to a certain context with someone who is ignorant is a sure sign of someone who's only worked in one context and doesn't know much about anything else. It maybe frustrating, but the frustration comes from inability to explain something which has been internalized. A person who doesn't recognize this about themselves usually ends up being difficult to work with.

True stories

[Ihlosi]

#1
"Did you fix the firmware problem yet?"
"A defective cable is not a firmware problem. The device not giving you no measurements instead of noisy measurements with a defective cable is not a firmware problem. From my point of view, the device now giving you noisy measurements and a warning message if a defective cable is present amounted to deliberately introducing a problem in the firmware.

#2
"Did you fix the firmware problem yet?"
"It's not a firmware problem. It's the analog circuitry unexpectedly crosstalking from point A to point B. But it's easier to make the firmware work around this than recall a hundred thousand devices."

Yes and No

[Etherwalk]

Insults are the first refuge of the insecure. I'm not talking Torvalds-style insults of the code, I'm talking about when they insult you.

Um, no. Or at least, not only that.

Human beings learn from modelling, from environment, from role models. While insecurity can be a part of what feeds an insult, an insult can also just be "this is how I learned to interact with people." Sometimes it was from an environment where the insult was considered friendly (and yes, insults can be intended and taken in a friendly way), and sometimes it was from an environment where that was the only way a boss knew how to get through to people, and sometimes it was from an environment where some other person learned it from someone who was abusive toward them, and sometimes...

Blaming this all on insecurity is inaccurate at best. At worst, it's more a strategy to urge people to be polite based on shaming them. And while shame can be an effective motivator, it's also a really insulting motivator to use.

Re:What?!

[Etherwalk]

Careful, someone who doesn't take kindly to those remarks might want to have a private meeting with you in the parking lot, kicking the shit out of you.

If only we had something we could call "assault" we could arrest people for. Or "jobs" that we could fire people from.

Re:What?!

[cyberchondriac]

Ad Hominem attacks, in other words.It's for those who don't have the mental faculties to logically debate a topic point by point, they just attack the messenger they disagree with instead of the idea.

I now await the, "You're an idiot" responses, playful or otherwise.

Re:What?!

[jellomizer]

Bad code deserves explanation not insults. We have all written bad code, we were getting tired, the deadline was looming, your head just wasn't in the right frame of mind, etc... Sometimes what people see as bad code is just because you needed to sacrifice a tradeoff to get an other advantage.
The "best practice" may take too slow for the current set of data. So some crazy method may be needed to fix the solution. Or perhaps there was mountains of working code, and you needed to put a workaround.

Re:Arrogant Asshat

[dgatwood]

If the program generates a fault, it's because a human wrote it. Error messages describing a fault are for the person the user calls for help. One could argue that they're for the user to read to the person the user calls for help, but that's just semantics; they're ultimately for the person the user calls for help, then, for the developer tasked with fixing the issue (and introducing two more).

Actually, that's the sort of data that you should send automatically to an analytics/logging server. The information you give to the user should be as simple as possible, telling them what they need to do if they want to get back up and running, and if those instructions require more than about ten words, the error dialog should provide a button that takes the user to a web page that contains those instructions.

Your helpdesk system should be tied to the error logging service so that when the user calls up and asks for help, the helpdesk people can say, "Yes, I see that the app experienced an I-D-ten-T error" or whatever, and can then provide assistance (to the extent that it is possible to do so).

Re: Arrogant Asshat

[BronsCon]

Yes, because that's the kind of thing your customers want. It's certainly not like a big cimpany like Microsoft has ever faced backlash for doing that, so a smaller developer shoukd be fine. Let's also not consider HIPAA or other laws that aoply in places where our software might be used, which might prohibit such data collection.

Re:Arrogant Asshat

[BronsCon]

Right, and if those situations aren't handled, it is because the human who wrote the software chose not to handle them. Sometimes there is a good reason, sometimes there is not, but it is always because of humans. I'd also like to point out that none of what you said was counter to my point; your response would have been better placed under the parent of my post.

Re:What?!

[Hognoxious]

Bad code deserves explanation not insults.

The first time? Certainly.
The third? Arguably.
The tenth time when it's bad for the same reason? Why are they even still there?

I'm surprised noone has mentioned

[Lauriy]

Nodejs hipster

Another slander

[tgrigsby]

At DHL back in the day, begin referred to as a "poison dwarf" was probably the worst. Not sure about the origins. It basically meant you were not only a useless loser, but your very presence tended to have a negative impact on the project and all the people involved in it.

Come on, its not 2009!!

[digitus2001]

"Come on, its not 2009!!" (pick any year approximate to when they started their career). Has worked well for me to grab their attention....

Re:Killing with Kindness

[OrangeTide]

You might want to read up on passive aggressive behavior.

Re: Arrogant Asshat

[HornWumpus]

Are you seriously arguing against error logs or are you just confused about where they reside?

For the record: Logging errors locally and to currently connected database is typical. Automatically sending errors to the application vendor isn't, having a way to send them in is, even if it's as simple as clicking 'send' on a dialog.

Wrong question

[GodelEscherBlecch]

Insults are easy to brush off, and usually come from overly defensive pedants with no real talent desperately trying to keep their grip on some digital fiefdom. The real nut punch is simply seeing somebody silently be better than you.

Re:Time for you to move into management

[HornWumpus]

I worked with an incompetent who consistently ended up with string concatenation operators in his result strings...Atul?

With an IDE that color coded the literals to help with quote matching.

Again and again. I think he just changed things until it compiled, then got real confused.

Re: Arrogant Asshat

[BronsCon]

I was arguing against "send automatically to an analytics/logging server" in the context of a software vendor. Surely that was evident when I mentioned Microsoft.

1px means 1/2700 of viewing distance

[tepples]

In CSS, 1px doesn't literally mean one pixel. It's whatever multiple of a hardware pixel is closest to 1/2700 of the distance from the eye to the display. On a 96 dpi display at arm's length, 1px is, yes, one pixel. A phone with a 160 dpi display, such as a pre-Retina iPhone may be held closer to the face and thus still one pixel per px. But on the higher-density displays of today's tablets and phones, 1px may equal 1.5 or 2 pixels. In any case, if you size everything in px, things will look perceptually the same size on all displays.

Re:"Did you even test this??!!!" [For Both]

[Tablizer]

*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.

Then it's a crap error message...

The error message should be for BOTH. You can give the user a decent general idea of what went wrong, but also give tech details for the help-desk etc. Example:

"Sorry, the email service cannot accept your message. It's not responding as expected. Click for details [button or hyperlink]."

The detail screen would then say something like:

Error Details
Error Code: 48271
Full Description: "The SMTP server that is designated to process messages is responding, but could not understand one or more commands that this application sent to it. Suggestion: switch on SMTP logging in the [application's] Settings, Messaging, Logging menu."

Re: Arrogant Asshat

[dgatwood]

You certainly can offer an opt-out mechanism if you want. That said, as long as there's no PII, there's typically no legal reason why you would have to do so (at least in the U.S.). Most folks who do single-app crash logging don't provide an opt-out mechanism these days (statistically), and there's really no difference between that and an error code except in whether the app dies....

Re:Worst insult for a coder:

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst insult I got as a programmer? My paycheck.

The day I got my first performance review 6 months after getting talked into a permanent position, having been a contractor for 2 years.

I busted my butt for those assholes, only to be told "your performance met expectations" and I was given a $2/day raise.

I looked at the new salary figure and wanted to say "I don't see any difference - oops, sorry; wrong column."

I didn't quit that day (though I was tempted) but definitely checked out mentally. I bode my time and found a position elsewhere with 10% higher pay and no mandatory overtime. Double win!

Gotta hate this one

[russotto]

"Now that's coding like a [pointy-haired] boss!"

Cargo Cult Programming

[Martin S.]

By far the worst insult to be accused of is Cargo Cult programming because it says not only is the implicated incompetent they are also dishonest.

While just making a mistake is inevitable human fallibility.

Re:Cargo Cult Programming

[Bengie]

I like to say "Pattern Anti-Pattern". Any time you use code without understanding what it's doing, you're doing Cargo Cult programming. Most people like to say high level languages mean you don't need to know what's going on, that just means they're Cargo Cult programmers.If you ever created a program that did not work as expected, it's probably because of Cargo Cult programming. Computers are logical systems that can be reasoned. For the most part, they work exactly as expected.

Re:Time for you to move into management

[RabidReindeer]

Sorry, no. Not Atual.

Being an incompetent typist does not equate to being an incompetent developer.

Certainly syntax-highlighting IDEs have saved me a lot of grief, but there's still plenty of room for screwups in SQL statements defined as string literals (the IDE checks the programming language, but not the SQL) and not everything that changes the semantics of a statement is actually syntactically invalid. Otherwise people would have a lot less trouble with there software design and it's more frustrating aspects.

Re:What?!

[Bengie]

Good programmers don't write bad code, they write less good code. Code quality is always relative to the problem at hand. If the problem is a complex mess, the code cannot be any better than the situation necessitates.

Re:And that is the reason why I never...

[Quirkz]

Kafka in this case being RCA.

Re: Ralph Nader

[Bengie]

A vegan diet works fine assuming you get everything you need. Eating some iceburg lettuce and broccoli isn't enough. Like you said "wide variety", an extremely wide variety is required. You say "powerful athletes", but by what definition? Many top performing athletes need to eat junk food just to get the required caloretic intake. It is literally impossible to eat enough vegan food to sustain the energy needs of a training athlete. It can be hard to eat 5,000+ calories of vegan food per day. You'll rupture your stomach.

Not an insult, but a comback from QA

[eric_harris_76]

Dev: "You broke my code."

QA: "It was broken when I got it."

Think Before You Speak

[herbierobinson]

Do you know what some of us more seasoned veterans in the industry call a passionate criticizer?

A volunteer [to fix the code].

Once where I worked, there was this horrible piece of user interface code (code that handles keystrokes always tends to be). And there was this programmer who was constantly flaming about how bad it was. Then there was the meeting with management about adding Kanji support to the operating system. He wasn't at the meeting, but everyone else familiar with the code was and got assigned to other tasks. The meeting finally got down to this one ugly piece of code and nobody left to enhance it. And somebody chimes in, "Mr X, was just talking about it the other day..." Note that "complaining" got translated to the less specific "talking". Mr X did a great job on that code, BTW. Nobody has ever complained about it since...

Re:Time for you to move into management

[HornWumpus]

Like I say, it was over and over.

'After my changes, the query fails...can you please help me with the needful?'...and once again there are '+'s in the SQL where the code was looping on fields (or something similar).

It would take him days just to break it...I think most of that time was spent getting it to compile by throwing extra 's and "s at it.

Re:Time for you to move into management

[RabidReindeer]

My condolences. But it's one thing to not be able to type cleanly and another to blatantly not know what you're doing.

Atul sounds like someone who's past the need for mere development advice and into the need for counseling to find a more appropriate line of work.

Sadly, he probably works so cheap that Management pats themselves on the back every morning for hiring him.

And any time you spend cleaning up after him goes into your Negative Productivity ratings, of course. "Why can't you just Get Things Done like Atul does?"