"Signs that you're a very special and boring hipster"


  • area_can



  • Care to quote a section you found WTFy? I didn't see anything weird.


  • area_can

    A tendency to suggest wacky and unrealistic solutions in meetings

    A cubicle or desk populated with toys that came from ThinkGeek

    Has a habit of boring people to tears explaining something tangentially related to the news, such as the cockpit layout of the Airbus 330

    Has foreign-language versions of popular songs on their iPod

    Envies but doesn't resent people with degrees in something they don't know

    Fire alarms provoke annoyance more than panic
    Cannot name any song that just played on the radio or through their headphones

    Granted, I think there are quite a few good points on there, but a lot of the post seems to be more, ‘look at me!’ than anything else.



  • There are lots of things wrong with it.

    It perpetuates the "real programmers have absolutely no respect for the economic environment which pays their wages" mentality of the 1970s popularized by that jargon file thing.

    Whilst there is some good advice in there. There is also some profoundly bad advice. The kind of advice which can be awfully destructive to businesses and teams trying to produce effective products which solve real-world problems.

    For example, advising people to be "Eager to fix what isn't broken." Regardless of how ugly it may be, if code is proven, tested and mature, it is highly unlikely that you'll be doing anything but creating an instant net-loss for all involved by rewriting it.

    Encouraging people to have a "A destructive pursuit of perfection". The title of this is self explanatory.

    The list goes on.

    in truth, this article should be called "signs that you're an unemployable geek who'll never work well in a team." or, perhaps "signs you're Linus Torvalds"


  • Banned

    Well, it doesn't look like the article is completely serious.



  • Listo Bullshit:

    Visits Lambda The Ultimate on a regular basis

    Knows what ATP synthase is. Has extracted DNA from a banana in their kitchen

    Owns a book with a dragon on the cover, especial

    ... in fact everything in that section. Nothing there has ANYTHING to do with being a good programmer, and most of it seems more related to being an asshole. For example:

    Giggles when someone says the phrase "This is recorded on sticky-tape and rust"

    1. Nobody in history has ever said that, and

    2. If you find it funny, you're not a "good programmer", you're a humorless retard

    Shoves through a crowd at a party to get near someone who just used the word "Bayesian"

    That word's never come up at a party, at least a party that has a crowd.

    Buys drinks for people who work in other industries and seem willing to talk shop when drunk

    Has a habit of boring people to tears explaining something tangentially related to the news, such as the cockpit layout of the Airbus 330

    People who go to a bar and talk about work are shitheads, not "good programmers". People who bore the fuck out of other people are losers, not "good programmers". (Well they may also be good programmers, but there's no relationship between the one and the other.)

    Blogs about their work

    So Jeff Atwood is a "good programmer"?

    Has an active Wikipedia account

    Haha no.

    Lets new hires borrow books that cost them $100 to buy

    This is about the only thing on the list that roughly translates to, "is not a selfish asshole".

    (Also, $100? Seriously? If you're concerned about lending a $100 book when you're a white-collar IT professional, you're TOTALLY a dick. A cheap dick.)

    Pauses "The Andromeda Strain" at the part about the sliver of paper getting between the bell and the ringer and grins like a madman

    ... because?

    Fire alarms provoke annoyance more than panic

    That's pretty normal for everybody, considering everybody on Earth has been through about 34 false-alarm fire alarms for each actually-justified fire alarm.

    Cannot name any song that just played on the radio or through their headphones

    A) what does this have to do with "incorruptible patience"?

    B) again sounds pretty normal. Radio stations don't even bother to name songs anymore, especially the good HDRadio ones. Your streaming site probably is minimized or on a monitor you don't look at frequently. What does it have to do with being a programmer at all, much less a "good programmer"?

    Is oblivious to how many times their cubicle-mate has gone for coffee, the bathroom, or the hospital

    Ok the first two are normal, but if your co-worker had to go to the hospital and you didn't notice you are a selfish asshole.

    Unbothered by office politics

    A good programmer would play the politics game, otherwise they're going to be writing shitty awful code from people promoted above them who have.

    Can predict a bug before the code is ever run

    That's pretty normal for any programmer. This is more relevant as the opposite: a bad programmer won't be constantly thinking about edge cases and possible uncaught exceptions as they're designing the code.

    Preference for dismissal over compromise

    Again: good programmer? Or dickwad?

    Substantial refactoring on the eve of a deadline

    Wow. Not just a dickwad but a stupid dickwad.

    Hey here's a clue: this idiotic quote is utterly incompatible with the one above about being able to predict errors before you write the code, BECAUSE UNLESS YOU'RE A RETARD YOU KNOW YOUR REFACTORING WILL PRODUCE ERRORS which will then be uncaught because guess what, that shit has to ship and congratulations you just RUINED your company's products. You "good programmer". Dumbshit.

    Unwilling to accept bonuses, promotion, or stock options for expediency

    Huh?

    Fondness for films directed by Stanley Kubrick

    What the FUCK does this have to do with a "destructive pursuit of perfection"? I guess because Kubrick also had that trait? So if you have it you logically MUST be a fan of the works made by someone else who had it. Except any true fan of Kubrick knows he directed his share of losers, too, and even some of his classic films like A Clockwork Orange have pretty severe errors in them.

    Can recite from memory all of the includables in the C Standard Library

    Wow. No.

    Raises a knowing eyebrow when you mention the "500 mile email"

    Ok strange use of literary device aside, what the holy fuck is the "500 mile email"? It's some boring shitty Linux-user story: http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

    Has a copy of the OpenDoc Programmer's Guide gathering dust on their shelf

    Loser. Or another cheap fuck who won't throw it away because it cost more than $100. Cheap loser.

    Can complete any sequence of dialogue from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Red Dwarf or Monty Python

    "Can" do it is pretty innocent, "actually does" do it puts this back into dickwad-ville.

    Rapidly identifies a synchronization bug caused by TCP's Sliding Window algorithm

    A.k.a. works at the exact wrong level of abstraction.

    Recognizes a bug that's caused by a microcode error on the CPU you're testing on

    Haha. This is like the geek version of Rambo or something? Utter bullshit. (Also most likely: works at the exact wrong level of abstraction.)

    Has a framed personal check for $2.56 from Donald Knuth

    Also is a geezer.

    Ok I'm only like 60% down the page, fuck this article.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    A good programmer would play the politics game

    No, they study the office politics game as if it was a problem to solve.

    Protip: be very nice to the boss's secretary.



  • @dkf said:

    No, they study the office politics game as if it was a problem to solve.

    It doesn't matter HOW you play the game, it matters THAT you play the game.

    The dumb article says a "good programmer" wouldn't play the game at all, and that's just stupid. You can pull that off if you're like a million times better than all your co-workers, but that's about the only scenario in which it works. EDIT: and even then while it might "work" in the sense that you get promotions and pay increases, everybody else will hate you all the fucking time, so it still doesn't really "work".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    It doesn't matter HOW you play the game, it matters THAT you play the game.

    Sounds like you're not good at it. 😛



  • Undoubtedly true, but I wager I'm 945,000 times better at it than the dweeb who wrote that article, WHICH IS THE THING WE ARE DISCUSSING, REMEMBER?

    "Derp derp derp dkf here I saw an opportunity to give Blakeyrat a vague and not-really backed-up insult so I'm going to do that and ignore what the topic is actually about because I am dkf dumbo man!"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    945,000 times better

    Oddly specific value y' chose there.



  • Thankfully, it's sarcasm. I hope.

    If not, it's exceptionally cringey.



  • @dkf said:

    Protip: be very nice to the boss's secretary.

    Proprotip: Be nice to secretaries in general.



  • "Signs that you're me"



  • @Bort said:

    "Signs that you're me"

    So, you're the guy who has already seen the movie, is sitting right behind me to watch it again and insists on speaking every line of it?

    I've got something for you.

    /ratchets the pump gun



  • Thought process behind the article.

    1. I am a quirky nerd with a quirky nerdy personality
    2. I am a good programmer
    3. Therefore, whoever has the same personality as me must also be a good programmer
    4. I'm not very good at logic, though


  • @cartman82 said:

    2) I am a good programmer

    Except he's doing major refactoring the day before release, so no, no he is not.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    2) I am a good programmer

    Except he's doing major refactoring the day before release, so no, no he is not.

    That's under title "A destructive pursuit of perfection"

    I'm not sure he's actually claiming it is a good thing.

    From the headline:

    I only wish I had these traits and I can only write about them because I've observed them in others. Every now and then I have a moment where I think I'm living one of these, but those moments are rare and cherished. They are also debilitating and brush up against the stereotypes of autistic savants, trading one kind of virtue for another: if you want greatness you have to be prepared to pay.

    In fact, his entire article seem to be more nuanced than it appears on the surface.

    It just isn't interesting or well written enough for me to get deeper into it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    FWIW, I see a shit-load of myself in each of those categories. Except I go more for pop music that just never made it into English in the first place. 😉

    But I admit that I've learned to cut releases from branches, not from the trunk.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @bb36e said:

    Has foreign-language Japanese, and ONLY Japanese versions of popular songs on their iPod

    Made that realistic for you.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    This invalidates anything he has ever said:

    Indifferent to the way the IDE wants to auto-format code, uninterested in "tabs-vs-spaces" arguments


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    >Cannot name any song that just played on the radio or through their headphones

    A) what does this have to do with "incorruptible patience"?

    B) again sounds pretty normal. Radio stations don't even bother to name songs anymore, especially the good HDRadio ones. Your streaming site probably is minimized or on a monitor you don't look at frequently. What does it have to do with being a programmer at all, much less a "good programmer"?

    The only way this makes sense is that you're listening to music, but aren't consciously aware of it enough to notice what the song was because you're so focused on what you're doing. Sometimes I pay more or less attention to music in many situations.

    This is just a dressed up buzzfeed listicle bullshit. Gell-Mann Amnesia FTW!


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @boomzilla said:

    The only way this makes sense is that you're listening to music, but aren't consciously aware of it enough to notice what the song was because you're so focused on what you're doing.

    No, it's hipster bullshit. "Uhg, I don't listen to that pop-trash they play for the sheeple on the radio. It all sounds like the same overproduced noise to me. I listen to REAL music, thank you very much. I don't bother wasting my time trying to memorize the names of the latest pop-tart the Disney corporate monolith has pumped out this month. Go rot your brain while I do ACTUAL work here."


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    The dumb article says a "good programmer" wouldn't play the game at all, and that's just stupid.

    Yeah, he's just rationalizing his poor social skills.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    No, it's hipster bullshit. "Uhg, I don't listen to that pop-trash they play for the sheeple on the radio. It all sounds like the same overproduced noise to me. I listen to REAL music, thank you very much. I don't bother wasting my time trying to memorize the names of the latest pop-tart the Disney corporate monolith has pumped out this month. Go rot your brain while I do ACTUAL work here."

    I get that...except he talks about listening to it in the first place, so. But given the rest of the drivel in that post, you could be right.



  • Yeah I agree with you here. “through their headphones” clearly means that it's music that they want to hear, that they just aren't noticing.

    I'd say that being able to ignore your environment is pretty tangential to programming ability, though. If you are easily distracted, just find somewhere quiet already. We had this issue at work, where I'm pretty impervious to external stuff, but I get really antsy when I need to pause (compiling, or if I need to rethink something), which would fuck up the rest of the dev team. I ended up moving out into the main open-plan, between the web team and support, which seemed to work out pretty well for everyone.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election Banned

    @blakeyrat said:

    Owns a book with a dragon on the cover, especial

    ... in fact everything in that section. Nothing there has ANYTHING to do with being a good programmer, and most of it seems more related to being an asshole.

    Off the top of my head I can think of at least two dozen books I own with dragons on the cover, and many insist that I am an asshole, so I guess you have some anecdotal evidence that this particular claim is accurate.



  • @caffiend said:

    For example, advising people to be "Eager to fix what isn't broken." Regardless of how ugly it may be, if code is proven, tested and mature, it is highly unlikely that you'll be doing anything but creating an instant net-loss for all involved by rewriting it.

    Fixing what isn't broken is how things move forward.

    Granted, if it's a system that's just sitting somewhere translating from some obscure format to XML, there's probably no need to touch anything. But if it's something that people interact with, it should be in constant evolution, and that means the code needs to be clean enough to make small changes.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    and that means the code needs to be clean enough to make small changes.

    And it's all those small changes which little-by-little, turn nice, clean, simple systems, into the veritable clusterfu*k that all mature systems inevitably become.

    Then, someone decides to embark upon a rewrite, resulting in simpler code, and usually (at least for the initial release) inferior functionality.

    I can't tell you how many times I've seen a rewrite fail to capture all the subtle, corner-case requirements which crept into the "old version", resulting in months of pain for all involved as they are slowly re-introduced into the "new version" (usually with much resistance and protesting from the "architect" of the new version, because it breaks his "architecture").

    It may sound a little jaded, but if there is a piece of fully tested, mature code that you find ugly, you probably won't put the effort into understanding it well enough to correctly re-implement it. Just black-box it behind an interface you like, and move on.

    Now I'm not talking about obvious stupidity (like where someone has done the equivalent of "manual loop unrolling", or a for/case), by all means fix that.



  • @Fox said:

    Off the top of my head I can think of at least two dozen books I own with dragons on the cover, and many insist that I am an asshole, so I guess you have some anecdotal evidence that this particular claim is accurate.

    I'm guessing the article is referring to the dragon book
    Most likely due to it's brief mention in that 90s counter-culture satire movie "hackers"


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said:

    Ok strange use of literary device aside, what the holy fuck is the "500 mile email"? It's some boring shitty Linux-user story: http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

    Boring story? Come on, it's a great anecdote which demonstrates the weird ways in which bugs can manifest themselves. It teaches you to take bug reports seriously and investigate the actual cause before "fixing" anything. Maybe we should send @wood that link.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    It's some boring shitty Linux-user story

    Since when is SunOS a Linux?


  • FoxDev

    @aliceif said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    It's some boring shitty Linux-user story

    Since when is SunOS a Linux?

    if it's not the blessed child of Redmond it's demon spawned Linux.



  • @caffiend said:

    I'm guessing the article is referring to the dragon bookMost likely due to it's brief mention in that 90s counter-culture satire movie "hackers"

    I had that one, but a much earlier edition that had a chef on the cover.

    Maybe he's just anti-Welsh:


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anonymous234 said:

    it should be in constant evolution

    Because it's kind of broken?



  • Agreed but for me, if I find anyone playing office politics at me, I'll just quit. (If there are just people playing office politics but doesn't use it against me, well, I'll pretend the problem does not exist)

    Seems I'm not a good programmer.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    That's pretty normal for everybody, considering everybody on Earth has been through about 34 false-alarm fire alarms for each actually-justified fire alarm.

    This is turned on its head in my current building. We have actual fire alarms once a month or so for minor fires and smoke events. The building is enormous and has zones, so the alarm is a basically Morse code for what area has to evacuate.

    It took several months of needlessly trudging out to the parking lot over and over again before someone mentioned this to us. We still don't know what the code for our area is. We figure that if theres a fire that'll affect us, it'll be in our cubes, anyway. We do know that drills are done with the full building alarm, which is a solid tone.



  • @caffiend said:

    I can't tell you how many times I've seen a rewrite fail to capture all the subtle, corner-case requirements which crept into the "old version", resulting in months of pain for all involved as they are slowly re-introduced into the "new version" (usually with much resistance and protesting from the "architect" of the new version, because it breaks his "architecture").

    I read it somewhere saying this is what caused Netscape to fail. But I don't buy it, all paid browsers were doomed as soon as ie was offered for free.



  • I have read the whole piece, through and through, several weeks ago. My source was https://github.com/daryllxd/lifelong-learning/blob/master/programming/philosophy/google-signs-youre-a-good-or-bad-programmer.md

    The description of bad, ugly, and "shouldn't be in the industry" symptoms is top-notch. I can barely think of how to put it better. Remedies are also good.

    Same goes for "good programmer", mostly. But the more you dive into the piece, the more opinionated it becomes. I suggest, however, that people use judgment and reasoning when dealing with articles like that: while we all may wholeheartedly agree on what a real WTF looks like, we all are deeply subjective as to what to become and what constitutes the creme de la creme of a perfect hacker/craftsperson/person.

    I don't consider myself a stellar programmer, I'm an almost complete dilettante in electronics and it bites me all the time, but I'm fairly confident I'm good at doing what I do in software development. My own perception of what makes a good programmer consists of one big point: gets shit done. Getting shit done sometimes takes not writing code. Getting shit done includes using hierarchies and social constructs to your advantage, no matter if you think they are good or not (you cannot ignore them — or they'll bite you back). It includes being pragmatic. Perfect tools won't work in imperfect world, you know. Being pragmatic and socially aware is a trait many geeky programmers lack, which makes them knowledgeable but unable to deliver value in the longer run.

    However, all that's said there about curiosity, being able to abstract things, learning all the time, applies very much.



  • Not knowing RegEx makes you an untermensch?
    That article is worse than total trash.



  • @aliceif said:

    Not knowing RegEx makes you an untermensch?

    No, not an Untermensch, just a worse-than-mediocre programmer.

    But hey, maybe you can cook a dinner good enough for G-d himself, so not all is lost!



  • @wft said:

    No, not an Untermensch, just a worse-than-mediocre programmer.

    Then fuck programmers.



  • @Buddy said:

    I get really antsy when I need to pause (compiling, or if I need to rethink something), which would fuck up the rest of the dev team. I ended up moving out into the main open-plan, between the web team and support, which seemed to work out pretty well for everyone.

    :wtf::wtf::wtf:

    @Buddy said:

    open-plan

    Oh, you mean "Our excuse for not giving you a feasible work environment is that it's a really modern design, guys! All the tech companies do it, it must be good!"?


  • FoxDev

    @wft said:

    My own perception of what makes a good programmer consists of one big point: gets shit done.

    honestly i'd use that description for a mediocre programmer or possibly a bad programmer....

    the hierarchy for me would go roughly like this where each level also encompasses the levels below (scale is of course subject to change without notice due to new experiences, research, or interactions with other people)

    ####WARNING! The following list is the OPINION of @accalia at this time, it is not backed by years of research, nor does it make an attempt to be unbiased.
    ####THIS OPINION IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL @accalia BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE OPINION OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE OPINION

    @accalia's scale of programmer ability:
    Great Programmer: Spends the time to test their shit so they can test that their code is correct and have a framework to ensure that any changes to the shit don't break something unintended.
    Good Programmer: Cares about getting shit done right, but not at the expense of expediency (unless such expense is warranted)
    Mediocre Programmer: Gets shit done with minimal supervision
    Bad Programmer: Can get shit done

    Using that scale i personally spend most of my time in the Good programmer spectrum, with occasional forays into Mediocre and Great programmer realms and have aspirations to eventually spend most of my time in Great Programmer land.

    ... maybe that scale isn't the best out there, but it mostly works and i havent really found a better one to replace it.



  • It's based on Unix...so not Linux, but I guess blakey meant "*nix" and not "Linux."



  • Have you ever considered just how cringey the piece actually is? It's basically a dude/❄ who has written code once saying this:

    HEY GUYS LOOK AT HOW SPECIAL I AM!!!! I DON'T UNDERSTAND SOCIAL NORMS AND I'M TOTALLY A GEEK BECAUSE I LIKE STAR WARS!!111111onehundredandeleven

    it's fucking awful, and none of it has anything to do with being a good programmer. or it's satirical.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @fbmac said:

    I read it somewhere saying this is what caused Netscape to fail. But I don't buy it, all paid browsers were doomed as soon as ie was offered for free.


  • BINNED

    Are you

    Indifferent to the way the IDE wants to auto-format code, uninterested in "tabs-vs-spaces" arguments
    ? If you are, I hope never to see your code.


  • I think his point is that you accept coding conventions.

    I indulge in thinking that everybody knows, deep in their hearts, that tabs are the only proper way to indent code. There is no debate.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @gleemonk said:

    I think his point is that you accept coding conventions.

    Sounds like office politics to me.


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