fragile programmers
Friday, September 3rd, 2004Fragile programmers or non-curious programmers that don’t deserve to be in the field?
There’s too many coders masquerading as developers.
Some developers simply don’t have it within them to be curious and examine what is happening behind the curtain of abstraction. Out of site, out of mind, bad things happen. These types of “developers” should be avoided; they are not worthy of their title.
They might be programmers, or coders, but not developers.
The developers that do peek around the curtain from time to time will come to understand that there’s more going on than meets the eye, that it isn’t magic, and that there might even be some use to knowing that those cogwheels are there and their basic interactions. Keeping that in the back of their mind while working at the higher levels can help them avoid creation of really bizarrely behaving or poorly performing applications.
Those who are not curious by nature should never be encouraged to enter the information technology field in anything other than first level customer support, where they will be happy to recite scripts over and over without knowing WHY.
In general, I never want to work with people who never owned an 8 bit computer during the mid to late 80’s, and whom never poke around with things just because they are curious. I may make exceptions for young-uns that show a spark of curiousity and more than their share of cluefulness.
I’m not even 40, and yet here I am sounding like a crusty old fart. “Hey you kids, get off of my lawn!”