Confessions of a terrible programmer

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:17:20 -0400, Joel Goldstick wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> Not specifically about Python, but still relevant:
>>
>> http://blog.kickin-the-darkness.com/2007/09/confessions-of-terrible-
programmer.html

> Pardon me, but I completely don't get this article.  Let me in on what
> is supposed to be the joke please!


It isn't intended as a joke. The article is serious, but it wraps its 
serious message in a bit of mild humour: here is a guy who calls himself 
a terrible programmer, but his projects are always completed on time and 
on budget, while "good" programmers' projects are late, over-budget and 
buggy.

The irony is that those who think of themselves as "good programmers" end 
up writing worse code than those who think of themselves as "terrible 
programmers", because the self-aware terrible programmers use all the 
tools in the programmer toolbox to improve their code and the others 
don't.

The author of that blog piece is too polite to say so, but I suspect that 
there's a certain amount of Dunning-Kruger Effect going on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

but I digress.


-- 
Steven