Developer snobbery again and again

posted by Jeff | Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 2:50 PM | comments: 2

Wow, this is a topic that I first visited more than three years ago, and it still comes up over and over. This time, it comes to light through this post (though I'm not calling out Frans, as he's just a messenger), and ultimately by this post. I just don't understand why people spend so much time trying to neatly categorize everyone and, in the process, imply some level of superiority. People who do that suck, and they're not fun to work with.

Personally, I think that 80% of software development is boring and mundane crap that most anyone can do. But the funny thing about most of the other 20% is that someone else has probably already figured out how to solve those problems, so with a little creativity and investigation, you can derive your own solutions. More to the point, you don't need to be a ninja, you need to be a problem solver who delivers quality work, on time. It's not more complicated than that.

The whole Linux and open source religion is like the DOS and Windows thing revisited. Some people thought they deserved some kind of trophy because they were able to do anything from a command prompt. If you're one of those people, hey, good for you, but I'm busy getting real work done.

Specific to the ASP.NET world, yes, visual tools can create a "crutch" of sorts, but who cares? If those crutches keep people walking and work gets done, whatever. Sure, these tools don't act as a free pass from understanding the underlying frameworks and performance implications, but so much of software development has no such implications to begin with.

The religion surrounding programmer types is a lot like platform religion. Sure, there are different levels of experience and such, but you use what's appropriate for the situation, just as you would use the appropriate platform. I can't understand people who waste time trying to categorize such things.

Command line jockeys are worthless when they can't even wrap their head around the business case for creating software in the first place.


Comments

Carrie

November 27, 2007, 7:57 PM #

Command line jockeys are worthless when they can't even wrap their head around the business case for creating software in the first place.

As a business analyst for a software implementation project I say amen to that.

Eric

November 28, 2007, 6:36 PM #

The 80/20 rule, aka the Pareto Principal, can be applied to almost every aspect of life.

The saddest part about all of this, is that it is not limited to software development - it is pervasive in our day-to-day world. I am confident that anyone reading this could leave their home/office today and experience only one in five "exceptional" people/experiences in any given situation.

The other part of the 80/20 rule is that 20% of people cause 80% of the problems, but that's for some other day.


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