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Calling All Programmers: Damn It! My Time is Valuable Too!
Disclaimer: If you're a programmer, before you want to slap me in the head, I'd like to point out that I write code every single day, am a published author on php and I've been published in Communications of the ACM. I know just how hard it is but there is just no excuse for this.
Traditionally the time of a programmer has been considered very valuable and rightfully so. Programmers are highly trained, often brilliant individuals. But there are now millions of programmers and, while you are still hugely valuable, you can no longer be the prima-donnas of yore. It's now 2002 and my time is also valuable. I hope that every programmer reads this. That's totally unrealistic so I hope that the programmers I work with read this.
"I Can't Test My Own Code"
Crap. B*S* (you know what I mean). Stop lying to me. *Insert Favorite Expletive Here* I am so bloody tired of hearing this. People have told this to me at least since 1987. This is so tired that it's just boring. I test my own code all the time. And, yes, it's harder but, let's be very honest: If you say this, I'll bet you that:
- You didn't even try
- You're just being lazy
I can understand that some bugs are open to interpretation. I'm fine with that. What I'm talking about are things that are just plain broken and then the developer says "I fixed it". I ran into this recently with someone I was working with on a project. I reported an error. Recreating the error involved running one command in a Bash shell with 1 parameter. "Wait you say -- this is hard -- different libs, distros, etc". NOPE! We were both logged into the same box. And we both did it as root. You can try if you want to but you'll never convince me that this person actually tried the fix they made. I'm sure that it was correct in his brain. But there was some kind of disconnect between the fingers and the brain, I guess. To be honest I really just don't care anymore. If users spoke up more instead of saying "Yes Mr. Programmer" then this kind of blatant laziness or rampant stupidity might be slightly less common.
Conclusion
I'm sure that if you've ever encountered this then you know just what I am talking about and it probably has cost you tens if not hundreds of hours. This is something that I really don't know how to solve but we have to start somewhere. So, to quote from a band, Quiet Riot:
We're Not Gonna Take It
NO! We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore