Does the 'Hacker Ethic' Harm Today's Developers? 436
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions whether the 'hacker ethic' synonymous with computer programing in American society is enough for developers to succeed in today's economy. To be sure, self-taught 'cowboy coders' — the hallmark of today's programming generation in America — are technically proficient, McAllister writes, 'but their code is less likely to be maintainable in the long term, and they're less likely to conform to organizational development processes and coding standards.' And though HTC's Vineet Nayar's proclamation that American programmers are 'unemployable' is overblown, there may be wisdom in offering a new kind of computer engineering degree targeted toward the student who is more interested in succeeding in industry than exploring computing theory. 'American software development managers often complain that Indian programmers are too literal-minded,' McAllister writes, but perhaps Americans have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. In other words, are we 'too in love with the hacker ideal of the 1980s to produce programmers who are truly prepared for today's real-life business environment?'"
Unemployable? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought our messy unmaintainable code made us unfireable.
Re:Hackers vs Designers - Hackers Loose every time (Score:1, Funny)
Designers can't spell.
Re:Hackers vs Designers - Hackers Loose every time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Unemployable? (Score:5, Funny)
But it's green (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, but us IT guys save A TON of money riding a skateboard everywhere, and it's environmentally friendly! Who's laughing now?
-The Plague
Re:You are not a cowboy. (Score:4, Funny)
Cowboys don't document.
Mama, don't let your babies groy up to be cowboys.
Re:Says who? (Score:5, Funny)
Not any more, now you're an anecdote.
Re:Stop posting McAllister. He's the new Dvorak. (Score:4, Funny)
We have a couple "cowboys", myself included. We blaze proof of concept code in whatever the heck
Blazing SDL's?
Re:Stop posting McAllister. He's the new Dvorak. (Score:3, Funny)
I'm going to work that into my API docs...
Not sure how, but I am.
-nB