Subj : Re: Is well written code a rare species ?
To   : comp.programming
From : Scott Moore
Date : Fri Aug 12 2005 03:33 pm

Alan Balmer wrote:

>>Get a job developing code rather that maintaining it.  Make it
>>clear up front, during your interviews, that you are a developer
>>not a maintainer, and, in fact, that you suck at maintaining code.
>>That's what I did before I worked on my own, and I'm sure it 
>>took me a lot longer to get jobs that way.
> 
> 
> I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that I wouldn't want products from a
> company who would hire someone with that philosophy.
> 
> When I worked as a development manager, every developer was required
> to spend time doing maintenance. It helped prevent stuff like the OP
> is describing.
> 

Exactly. Programmers who "work their way up" to not having to do maintence
programming are the other side of the broken system. Since they no longer
have to fix their programs, but instead work on "clean sheets", they
increasingly create buggy programs as they fall out of touch with
reality.

This is the standard ethic of programming: Climb quickly out of "dirty"
maintence programming, get a development job and leave debugging to
the peons you just left, then leave the company while your star is
shining for a better offer, before the true scope of the bugs in your
work become apparent.

To be perfectly mean about it, programmers are like dogs. They need
their noses pressed into their messes.

.