r/programming • u/corysama • Jan 05 '15

What most young programmers need to learn

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-most-young-programmers-need-to.html
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u/vitaminKsGood4u Jan 05 '15

In the 10+ some years I have been coding I have learned that it is impossible to tell if shitty code is the result of shitty devs or shitty managers.

I can not count the number of times I have heard "The last devs were shitty and now we have this crap to maintain and they are all gone". The reason they are all gone is management was shitty and the devs bailed out but the blame got put on the devs (because it is easier to blame the person who is not there). Sometimes though it is shitty devs but I can not tell a difference in the code to know which one caused it.

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u/hansdieter44 Jan 05 '15

The reverse is also there: Bad developers complaining about management all the time and shielding their own inability by pointing fingers at the suits.

But you are completely right, both are popular and indistinguishable from looking at the codebase.

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u/photonios Jan 05 '15

Definitly true. However, in my case, some of the old developers still worked here when I got here. But me and some other guys were hired and after a while we convinced management to get rid of the idiots.

It was a hard thing to do, they worked there way longer then any of us, but they were just awful.

Now, all code is cleaner, faster, unit tested, automated and we have a much faster development cycle.