programming principles

my experience tonight taught me something valuable about myself. i will happily go to the ends of the earth to make sure that my codebase is 100% - but i have zero tolerance when dealing with the shortcomings of third party off-the-shelf software. apache foundation, ibm rational, tortoise, i'm looking at YOU. take some pride in your work!

aspie girl tells me that i should expect less. i don't. and because i don't, i produce higher quality. it's because i'm lazy. it's because experience has taught me that the easy way is the right way, and the quick and dirty way is the long and stupid way. i understand, not just as a catchy phrase but as an internalized fundamental principle, that anyone who says "we don't have time to do it right" is not only completely wrong and logically backwards, but is fully deserving of the title "imbecile" and "organizational hazard".

the end user is stupid, and pays for the right to be so. the middle user (or developer) is also stupid, and there's no way to distinguish between middle user and original developer because we all use each others' tools so that makes the developer stupid too. don't piss in your own pool.

i would rather (like i've just done) deal with the frustration of having to teach a newbie all the basics than fight with an experienced developer who's been taught to play dumb. that sentiment does not preclude my willingness to preach to the sinners, though. any monkey can churn out a piece of code that works - for a given definition of "works". but you have to think a little bigger to make something that will continue to work.

and not end all austrian email addresses with an @ sign. nor require that your users *know* that they should look for help in a forum before running what appears to be a standard installation package. with error messages like "did not run", and no explanation. seriously?!