Sorry A33 Programmers revisited

Comments

# William said on June 19, 2004 10:48 PM:

Ok so now we are all seeing that this isn't isolated cases. We've all run into it and from the feedback we aren't the only ones. Now what do we do about it? I mean we can complain all we want and I think it's good to get it out in the open and let people know all developers aren't like that. But how do we make a difference? I'd like to hear suggestions for legitimately making a difference and policing our own profession so to speak. I know nobody appointed us judge and jury but somebody needs to draw a line in the sand and say "the bullshit stops with me". I know it bugs me that there are people like this out there but that only cuts so much water. I will try and think up suggestions too then maybe we could put them all together in a list with "this is the problem, here are some suggestions we have come up with for making our profession a better place" and post it to our blogs, and every list and board we belong too and see if other folks pick it up too. What do you think?

# William said on June 20, 2004 4:20 PM:

What do I think? I think I just read pure wisdom in your last post. Keepin it real has always been cool and always will be, and you're on to something. I bet if we kept an ongoing list of Programming "Keeping it Real" ideas, there'd be both a ton of contributors and a ton of readers. I remember reading a book a few years back called "True Professionalism" (I'm 95% sure of the title) that covered a whole lot of what most of us get pissed off about. It doesn't afflict our industry exclusively by any means, but since our industry is young as hell and not everyone uses computers, a lot of people think of it as magic and wizardry--- that's why the phonies get to do what they do. The Securities industry suffers a lot of the same sh1t...how many wannabe stockbrokers are there out there with all kinds of ideas on why shit like Space Shuttles dotcom is a good idea "Yes, they're going to sell space shuttles on the Internet. You'll have to provide your own shipping, Fuel and Astronauts, but isn't it a great idea? i can get you in on the IPO since you're one of my best customers..."

We really need to start working on the list

# William said on June 20, 2004 8:19 PM:

i would love to be a part of it!

# William said on June 21, 2004 12:06 AM:

i'm no King-Mullah-Worship-Me-i'm-fawkin'-Great...but i'd contribute!

# William said on June 21, 2004 7:29 AM:

Brian:

Neither am I, it's just sounded like a pretty cool title. I remember back when the Taliban first came into power, there was a dude, Supreme Grand Mullah Muhammad Omar. I thought the Supreme and Grand together were a bit pretentious but what the heck. He was the dude that had a patch over his eye and had the Buddhist statues (that had been in Afghanistan for forever) knocked down b/c he thought Allah was getting all f----d off about them. I challenged Clinton to a duel in the town square one time when he got pissed off at the US. An interesting approach to diplomacy to say the least. Anyway, due to events that happened 9/11, goofing about the Tabliban, even in a pre 9/11 sense seemed kind of in bad taste. Then I thought screw it, if some dork like him and call himself Supreme and Grand in one sentence, Words that are usually used with either "Nachos", "Burrito" or "Chalupa" in any other context, I can do. I don't have a patch over my eye, never made love to a camel and I like to shower regularly, but I was just goofing on the whole title thing. Don't even get me started on Supreme Ayatollah Al J:had Asshole or whatever his name is.

So, by virtue of the will of Supreme All-Knowing Software Nerd/Mullah Bill, and in the name of Allah of all Software, praise be his name, may Brian be included in our religion of cool programmers and good software design.

In order to stay in good graces, all member must declare Jihad against the following:
1) VB Programmers that don't use Option Strict
2) .NET Programmers still using Dynamic Sql and not using Paramaterized Queries
3) Hungarian Notation
4) People who use "I have x years of experience" in an argument every time they've been defeated logically
5) Buzzwords
6) Technical Writers who care more about documentation than the product
7) Everyone else in Caustic Phil's list, both present and future

I will continue with the list as Allah's will becomes known to me (and you have to promise not to tell anyone that when I'm talking about Allah's will, it's simply a fancy word for Pet Peeves Me or my Friends Have, just with a cooler name).

# William said on June 22, 2004 10:39 AM:

praise be the allmighty Mung Bean!

urgghhfff...i never thought i'd see the day when somebody of like mind would profess to have intelligence..but..can't help myself!!

3) Hungarian Notation

arggff...i'm in shock..caustic shock...i've just started at a new place and one of the concerns i had when starting was that there was no coding conventions, no structured architecture planning or just general nonsense on how to keep development at a standard everybody could understand..

so, i set out on a holy mission to relieve my brethren-in-development of this mistake and created a documented development plan, through the entire development life cycle - including of course, coding conventions...and here i had to battle with a "old" java programmer and a .Net convert/VB6 guru...now...funner enough, both gave me their feedback (the rest was happy as campers) and noted that i'd slipped up a bit...hungarian notation...ouch...bad bad bad habit of mine (well, i'm a peasant so what do you expect) and eventhough i've been at .Net for quite some time i hadn't manage to get rid of that habit (i gave myself 65 lashes!).

Now being a convert and a smart one at that, i've thrown my beliefs over the cliff and dropped them....

so what meets me...first project after that needs a bit of clean up..i get hungarian notation all over the place!!!!!!!! spewing!!..anyways - we're all off the habit now, on the road to recovery and generally feeling pretty good about ourselves (except the java programmer who's still not seen the light and converted to .Net).

# William said on June 22, 2004 12:02 PM:

just on a different (but with a touch of likeness)...something that irks me a little bit more than lame-arse-programmers-that-doesn't-know-shite (can i say shite here??) is project managers who tends to have the "It's an internal project so we wont bother with proper project management, lets run it by the ear and see what happens, eh chaps?"...

never had any more time consuming projects than "infernal" projects where the total document scope is based on "do the google-thing" and if you're lucking, you'll find something that might resemble what we're trying to put together though with time it would be really great if you could make it completely re-usable [insert thought of foot processing funny bone here] and commercially viable!

# William said on June 22, 2004 3:52 PM:

Brian:

Of course you can say Arse and Shite. That internal project comment had me rolling. A buddy of mine told me about one he worked with and they were going to bring Payroll inhouse, after all, how hard can it be? So it got squeezed in with everything else. Needless to say their Project Manager sounded like the guy who would be featured in Super Project Manager Magazine or Super Dumba33 Magazine, depending on if other Project Managers or Programmers did the voting. It was such a disaster that employees were threatening to quit. The best part was that the manager insisted everyone be moved to it, except of course him and his superiors. can you imagine the animosity this must have created? I never saw the rule either that just because it's internal means that it doesn't have to follow the rules of nature or good programming, but they must teach you that in PM college somewhere.

# William said on June 22, 2004 4:38 PM:

Brian:

After reading your other post, you officially get a membership to the Casey Sycophant cult. I'm currently the cult leader and it's a pretty cool cult. You have a be a good programmer to get in, but you have to have some humility. If you've ever gotten paid by a stripper that helps too. But the main thing is having a sense of humor, being down to earth and knowing that you don't know everything. I've also given Phil, Skicow and Andy memberships too. If you haven't checked out their stuff yet, click on their links b/c they all kick a33. And of course, so does casey. we are starting a revolution of cool programmers and jihading against all pretentious/know it all incompetent programmers with big egos. It's cool and after reading your post, I've come to the conclusion that so are you!

# William said on June 23, 2004 11:09 AM:

cheers bill and thanks...

now, before i go on typing here i'm fetching a beer (it's 11pm btw!)...ahh..that's better..got myself a Crownie..

first off..checked out the other guy's stuff...damnit! you're right - cool stuff..i especially like the "press release". Pissed myself laughing!

onto another moronic semantic brainfart...i got to get a blog set up that's NOT danish! any pointers guys? (sorry to be off topic here, but human nature [read: jealousy and lust] took over)

# William said on June 23, 2004 11:17 AM:

damnit..didn't see the first resposne from you Bill...SHITE!!

what happens...i get thrown onto an internal project today...SharePoint Portal Server 2003 setup + a couple of web parts on the go...documentation...what documentation!?!?!? all i got was a two page sectioned description of what "would be nice to have"..

Anyways...things are improving..i've ganged up the rest of the dev team and we've finally gotten things more or less under control (i've been there only 7-8 weeks and already stiring up shite!)..

# William said on June 30, 2004 12:06 PM:

Cool deal, sounds like you have a lot of excitement there ;-)