What Makes Great Programmers Different?
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The article seems to have omitted mentioning me.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Yes you are correct. They could have easily used you as the comparison of how they are different.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet.
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Chris Losinger wrote:
why do programmers love to talk about themselves so much?
because nobody else does?
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012) -
Though I voted 5 in good faith, I have to say that I've seen a lot of places making posts like this, and they all seem like absolute sunshine. They all have the same feel to them as a 2am infomercial about how to get rich. I think the only people qualified to even begin to guess what it takes to be a great programmer are... great programmers. Even at that, they may not know what actually makes them great. In considering all of their personal qualities and experiences that make them great, no one can distill all of that information into a blog post. The only thing we can be sure of is: Q: What makes great programmers different? A: They are great programmers. Stop trying to be great, and be great.
Be The Noise
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Though I voted 5 in good faith, I have to say that I've seen a lot of places making posts like this, and they all seem like absolute sunshine. They all have the same feel to them as a 2am infomercial about how to get rich. I think the only people qualified to even begin to guess what it takes to be a great programmer are... great programmers. Even at that, they may not know what actually makes them great. In considering all of their personal qualities and experiences that make them great, no one can distill all of that information into a blog post. The only thing we can be sure of is: Q: What makes great programmers different? A: They are great programmers. Stop trying to be great, and be great.
Be The Noise
Anyone can call themselves a great programmer.
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012) -
Anyone can call themselves a great programmer.
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012)True, to clarify, I meant programmers that are widely regarded by others as being great... ... although then I guess you get into the 'how do they know?' question... I've just entered an endless loop... ... long story short, I have no idea what I'm saying... I'm just sick of posts like these.
Be The Noise
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Good point. I've long held that engineers are fundamentally lazy. That's why we keep inventing things to make our jobs seem less like work. Just about every job I've had in my life, I left easier to do than I found it, even the non-engineering jobs.
Will Rogers never met me.
Yes. One had to laboriously put together a NOR gate, NAND gate or J-K flipflop. Then the engineers decided these circuits can be built as Small-scale IC's and we got those. Then they decided, we could have adders, counters, timers, etc., without having to design them from scratch. Then they put together calculators capable of doing 4 functions. From there, they have taken us to systems on a chip. Software Engineers, on the other hand, still laboriously hand-crank out code. Objects are supposed to be reusable. What object is reusable? Can I go find objects in the marketplace like I can find a gate array or an Intel processor chip? Software Engineering is a joke. A bad one at that.
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why do programmers love to talk about themselves so much?
Because most of the time, they're talking *to* themselves about how stupid they are.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
Yes. One had to laboriously put together a NOR gate, NAND gate or J-K flipflop. Then the engineers decided these circuits can be built as Small-scale IC's and we got those. Then they decided, we could have adders, counters, timers, etc., without having to design them from scratch. Then they put together calculators capable of doing 4 functions. From there, they have taken us to systems on a chip. Software Engineers, on the other hand, still laboriously hand-crank out code. Objects are supposed to be reusable. What object is reusable? Can I go find objects in the marketplace like I can find a gate array or an Intel processor chip? Software Engineering is a joke. A bad one at that.
We have: C# BigInteger Class[^] OpenCV[^] And just about any article on this site. There are a plethora of other libraries. Google for them ;-)
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why do programmers love to talk about themselves so much?
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Chris Losinger wrote:
why do programmers love to talk about themselves so much?
Uhhmmm... Isn't the article referenced writen by a journalist not a programmer? :confused:
beats me, but that's not the point. the point is that there's a steady stream of posts here (and elsewhere) where programmers muse about how special and smart programmers are. do other professions spend this much time patting themselves on the back?
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The difference between good and bad programmers, is laziness, IMHO. The good programmer uses their laziness, wisely. The bad programmer, well, they don't.
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012)That has always been my motto. "Program like the laziest person on earth" (I've actually told this to a fellow co-worker). It's ultimately why I am successful in my career. When I approach a problem, the questions I ask myself are: 1. What's the quickest way to get this done? 2. How can I minimize the amount of time spent in "RMA-land?" 3. How can I minimize the lines of code without compromising the integrity of the application? 4. How can I spend more time writing replies on forums than actually doing my job? :laugh: I'm known for my speed and accuracy in programming. I don't consider myself one of the "greats," but if you want to be a hero as a programmer, you have to adopt the ethics of laziness on a grand scale.
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beats me, but that's not the point. the point is that there's a steady stream of posts here (and elsewhere) where programmers muse about how special and smart programmers are. do other professions spend this much time patting themselves on the back?
Chris Losinger wrote:
... there's a steady stream of posts here (and elsewhere) where programmers muse about how special and smart programmers are ...
Sounds like a case of "P"rogrammer envy. The posts, here at least, seem to be discussing the premise of the article.
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That has always been my motto. "Program like the laziest person on earth" (I've actually told this to a fellow co-worker). It's ultimately why I am successful in my career. When I approach a problem, the questions I ask myself are: 1. What's the quickest way to get this done? 2. How can I minimize the amount of time spent in "RMA-land?" 3. How can I minimize the lines of code without compromising the integrity of the application? 4. How can I spend more time writing replies on forums than actually doing my job? :laugh: I'm known for my speed and accuracy in programming. I don't consider myself one of the "greats," but if you want to be a hero as a programmer, you have to adopt the ethics of laziness on a grand scale.
4 posts for this year and a member for 6+ years. I have never seen you in the community before. :) I like your item #4. :thumbsup:
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012) -
4 posts for this year and a member for 6+ years. I have never seen you in the community before. :) I like your item #4. :thumbsup:
"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012) -
I don't agree with some of the author's decisions. Personally, I'd LOVE to read "... an article on building your own DBMS in less than 100 lines of JavaScript". And you never know, publishing something like that might go a long way in helping that individual along the road to being a great programmer. I'm sure there are plenty of people on the internet who would like nothing more than to help that potential author ...
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beats me, but that's not the point. the point is that there's a steady stream of posts here (and elsewhere) where programmers muse about how special and smart programmers are. do other professions spend this much time patting themselves on the back?
Chris Losinger wrote:
do other professions spend this much time patting themselves on the back?
How many sports media outlets are there? How many journalist awards are there? How many awards for authors are there? You know that there is a waiter olympics?
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Chris Losinger wrote:
do other professions spend this much time patting themselves on the back?
How many sports media outlets are there? How many journalist awards are there? How many awards for authors are there? You know that there is a waiter olympics?
so programmers are just as narcissistic as everyone else. not special at all.
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Yes. One had to laboriously put together a NOR gate, NAND gate or J-K flipflop. Then the engineers decided these circuits can be built as Small-scale IC's and we got those. Then they decided, we could have adders, counters, timers, etc., without having to design them from scratch. Then they put together calculators capable of doing 4 functions. From there, they have taken us to systems on a chip. Software Engineers, on the other hand, still laboriously hand-crank out code. Objects are supposed to be reusable. What object is reusable? Can I go find objects in the marketplace like I can find a gate array or an Intel processor chip? Software Engineering is a joke. A bad one at that.
Seriously?? My first job I wrote an email program in assembly code. Then we made a compiler for a primitive "C-like" language. Then we got an honest to good K&R 1.0 C compiler. Then there was C++. Then garbage collection... There has been a lot of good Engineering that has gone into Software. The only reason Hardware Engineers and Chip designers seem to be more of an engineering discipline is that it costs so damn much when they screw up. Nobody will trust an undisciplined engineer to design hardware or silicon -- they can't afford it. Unfortunately the cost of creating and fixing software is so much less, that nobody thinks anything of hiring some cowboy with no discipline to write software for them.