Developers: Your Complaints about Code Are Misdirected

Collin Rusk
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read
“person facing tuned on MacBook Pro” by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash

Any experienced developer has stockpiled interaction with other developer’s code and with developers themselves — frequently talking about other people’s code. The lines of other programmers come up, often with a smattering of grousing. These complaints tend to be accompanied by remedies to the complaint’s source. A wellspring of woe could have been avoided, if only the developer who wrote the code had been less of a blockhead. This code is typically an odious collection of lines. That code’s developer is sometimes a detestable hack, a scourge on the programming community, but he isn’t always an imbecile. In fact, imbecilic developers are hardly the most frequent root cause of poorly built software. Negligently constructed programs tend to have a root cause more fundamental than programmers or even technology.

Mechanisms cannot mitigate their misuse by low-quality programmers. Inept coders tend to misuse technology, even if the “correct” one is chosen. An otherwise properly chosen implement can be bent, twisted, and hammered into solutions that baffle the mind — in a bad way. For example, an inept developer knows that he can use session state or view state to store data between post-backs, but he does not think to ask what the difference between the two are. Without knowledge of that distinction, a programmer will likely pick session or view state based on whichever one he is familiar with and/or what he has used before, leading to mind-exploding solutions. Such brain-frying implementation are typically avoided by more capable programmers who are likely to investigate the difference between two choices such as session state and view state. These discrepancies are rarely investigated by inept coders, leading them to make the same mistakes, regardless of technology. A mechanism cannot prevent an inept coder from misusing it in ways that are an affront to all that is good and decent. Incapable programmers are more frequently a cause of low-quality software than are poor technological choices.

While capable developers can mitigate poor technological choices, they cannot mitigate fundamental organizational issues. An organization’s foundational problems affect the unit’s bloodstream, causing systemic harm. That damage cannot be cured by healing headaches caused by incapable programmers. In fact, the existence of the incapable-coder problem likely stems from the systemic destruction caused by rudimentary organizational troubles. These struggles affect every aspect of organization, including its developers, yet those problems do not disappear, if the trouble with coders is removed. The complications are a symptom rather than the disease. The disease is whatever affliction an organization has. Cure that ailment to mitigate the other issues such as inept developers or serially bad software.

Bad programs, or bad code, are frequently a topic discussed amongst developers, who consistently air complaints about the sins of other programmers. These abominations can be purged, according to grumbling developers, if only the programmers in question weren’t such hapless hacks. Rarely, are the detested coders hacks, imbeciles, or any other derisive term. The hack is, if he exists, rarely the root cause. The source of the grouchy developer’s complaints is likely organizational. An issue afflicts the organization, team, department, etc. that produced the software. To correct the product, fix the organizational problem.

Data Driven Investor

from confusion to clarity, not insanity

Collin Rusk

Written by

Software Architect with a specialty in enterprise systems and a broad collection of interests

Data Driven Investor

from confusion to clarity, not insanity

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