If _______________, you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

If _______________, you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

This meme is going around on twitter. Want to try filling it in?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I'lll start:

If you've never argued about why deadlines are impossible, you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

[Randy Maddocks]

If all too often you give overly optimistic coding estimates for projects (because you wouldn't want to disappoint anybody), you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

This is fun Jeanne, thanks!  

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . never deleted 50% of your code and found no change in functionality . . .

[Bear Bibeault]

"you think clever code is good"

[Jan de Boer]

If you think that all software problems should be solved by that one tool and programming language you know best, ...


I mean this: I once had a colleague who did everything in Delphi what could have be done far more easily in e.g. a shell script. But he knew Delphi, so everything was solved with calling a little Delphi exe. Calling a Delphi console exe to copy some files to a certain location, stuff like that.

[Tim Cooke]

If you think your code is perfect, you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

[Peter Rooke]

If you think politics and communication are not important, you have at least another level to master before calling yourself a programmer.

you think your code is perfect,

It still wasn't perfect,
As year followed year,
And strangers would comment,
“Is that guy still here?”

He died at the console,
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, nine-edge first.
The Last Bug!

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . you believe that getting the correct result from two runs of the program means your program is correct . . .

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . you can't understand any of the documentation . . .

[Campbell Ritchie]

A few minutes ago, I wrote:. . . you can't understand any of the documentation . . .

. . . you can understand all of the documentation . . .

[R.J. Arzki]

Jan de Boer wrote:If you think that all software problems should be solved by that one tool and programming language you know best, ...


I mean this: I once had a colleague who did everything in Delphi what could have be done far more easily in e.g. a shell script. But he knew Delphi, so everything was solved with calling a little Delphi exe. Calling a Delphi console exe to copy some files to a certain location, stuff like that.

This is exactly the one I wanted to write as well Now I have to thing of another one.

1) ... you've never rewritten your code just because you found out there is a better way of doing it...
2) ... you never fixed bugs on production using vim, while waiting for the official hot-fix to go live...

[Randy Maddocks]

If you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result...

Many of you may also recognize that as the definition of insanity / stupidity. Some days, when I am very frustrated I reach that point of desperation where I cross my fingers, close my eyes, and quietly pray that running my code again without any changes will yield correct results.

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . you know you can correct code by simply staring blankly at it . . .

[Randy Maddocks]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:...you know you can correct code by simply staring blankly at it...

That sort of segways nicely from my previous post about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. There have been times I have had this kind conversation with myself after staring at my code for what seems like an eternity: "There is no way this shouldn't work. I can't see where this is buggy. Since I don't see any problems I am going to run it again, it should work"... If you step back and look at this any sane person would come to the conclusion that the "programmer is not playing with a full deck", but in the "heat of the moment" when debugging code your mind can do strange things...

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . In which case, you have given another quote:-
. . . if you think you can sort it out in the heat of the moment . . .