It’s funny cause it’s true

It’s funny cause it’s true 🙂

Eerst dit artikel lezen, en dan de reactie hieronder, die op Slashdot stond.






My experiences of programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29, @10:12AM (#5622150)
After 8 years of software testing and QA, here are my experiences of programmers. No it’s not flame bait – but mark it down as you wish

1. They do not know the meaning of deadlines! How many times, I’ve been working late because some dim wit of a developer didn’t see the importance of actualy meting the deadline he proposed himself. Working late evenings, working weekends because the programmer didn’t see why he should put the extra time in to catch up. Sounds familiar?

2. They do not know the meaning of quality. How many times have I sat there with a program or package from development that simply will not work / start-up / compile. All this despite development’s assurances that they do actualy unit test. I once had to test a program that did nothing, ie it was called from another program, but all it should do is close itself down – it was a stub. How difficult is that to program and how difficult is that for the programmer to test themselves? It took SEVEN attempts to get it right!

3. Keep it simple stupid! How many times have I had to sit there wondering if I was looking at the correct Buisness Requirements and Functional Spec. Final designes seem to be as complcated as posible rather than simple. Functionality slippage is common – lets put this bit in as well.

4. Yes, but programmers are artists. Bollocks! If you look at almost any system, you will see that the basic number of functions is very limited. Given any average office system, you could probably find public domain code to do 90% of what you need. Yes it will need changing and tweaking, but this idea that you sit there creating is simply rubbish. Perhaps if you stopped creating and started engineering things would be better.

5. The Prima Donna syndrome. Programming used to be a black art. Well it isn’t any more. However, some developers seem to think they should still be treated differently as this article demonstrates. If any other professional argued that they needed a kip durring the day, they would probably be booted out. You want a kip, have it at lunch time! Not having a much time at lunch – welcome to the real world.

I know this is going to be marked down as flame bate, but it has to be said it is about time that programmers came back into the real world. With comments like If a programmer’s flow is interrupted it can take a large amount of time for her to regain the state, sometimes up to an hour. do you realy wonder why people question programmers professionalism? Everyone else has to work hard for a living, and creativity comes into most jobs, but most just get on with it.

It’s funny cause it’s true.

It’s funny cause it’s true.

Remember Stephen Donaldson?


If you do, you’ve probably read his fantasy series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Donaldson had a style of writing …uniquely his own in that series, which showed what can happen to a man under the influence of thesauri. In a recent discussion of Donaldson in rec.arts.sf.written, Joel Baxter illustrated his style as follows:

“Some coffee, Mr. Covenant?”

“No!” he panted, glaring. The gelid liquid was anthraciously black, atramentous, nigrescent as his carious and macerated soul. “No,” he groaned. “Do you hear? I will not!” Shaking, he fumbled for his empty mug, clawing at it with numb hands like blocks of rotted wood. Finally, gasping, he closed his fingers on the malefic vessel, upending it, then ramming it downward to the table again… violently stopping the irrefragable, ineluctable maw with intransigent formica. The sudden whipcrack sound threw a refulgent oriflamme of pain across his sight, and he closed his eyes with a febrile shudder. “No,” he whispered. No more. No more.

“All righty then, I’ll be right back with your check!”

It’s funny because it’s true.

Posted by Martin Wisse at 3:10AM PST [ | Permalink ]

Ik heb al die mens zijn boeken gelezen, vrees ik. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, een en twee. Mordant’s Need. En de hele Gap-serie. Als ik me niet vergis was mijn eerste hardcover ooit één van de Gap-boeken. Gekocht in een science fictionboekhandel in New York.