Signs of Ineffective Programmers: A Humorous Analysis

Bad programmers often display arrogance, lack curiosity, and conflate job titles with competence.

### Seven Signs of a Bad Programmer: A Humorous Take on Developer Behaviors
* 😅 Many programmers exhibit common traits that can indicate inefficiency, such as **excessive time spent on Twitch** instead of focusing on their work responsibilities.
* 💻 The phenomenon of the "**mechanical keyboard**" user often correlates with those who struggle to engage in **productive stand-up meetings**, leading to frustrating discussions that **veer off-topic**.
* 📉 The article humorously critiques the tendency of some developers to suggest **deleting entire projects**, disregarding the **potential impact on team morale** and the **complexities of technology choices**.
* 🤔 A lack of curiosity in the field can lead to stagnation, where programmers focus solely on **financial gain** rather than the **joy of problem-solving and growth** in their careers.
* ⚖ The "Peter Principle" highlights how individuals can **rise to positions of incompetence**, as promotions are often based on **past successes that don't translate to new roles effectively**.
* 📝 The author points out that while displaying one or more of these signs doesn't definitively label someone as a bad programmer, **consistently exhibiting all seven** could indicate a **lack of proficiency**.
* 🎉 Ultimately, the article serves as a light-hearted reminder that **self-awareness and a willingness to improve** are essential for becoming a truly effective developer.

Seven signs of a bad programmer. How many do you think I'm gonna get? Real talk, type it up here. How many of those do you think I'm going to have? One, two, seven? Okay, well, I'm happy that all of you guys think I'm an...

Then I'm stupid, really? What this shows is that I'm emotionally bruised all the time. Streaming the seven signs of a bad programmer... uh, the Secret Developer. Okay, four-minute read. Let's go! Let's go. There are many ways to be effective or ineffective at a job.

Here are a few that seem to be the running theme with some programmers I've worked with over the years. Number one: You watch a lot of Twitch, specifically the Primogen... Let's see, I'm a software engineer, not a programmer. Okay, okay, okay.

You know what they're like? Mechanical keyboard in the office. Can't make stand-up because they're thinking about a problem. It's a five-minute mention of what you're thinking about. How long did this... Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! This... Yes, yes. Conflating the person with the

mechanical keyboard; the person that thinks... you know, that gets lost in a problem. This is so good! Oh no! Oh no! First off, stand-ups are never five minutes. It's because... it's because Bill won't shut up about his dog. Well, actually, this weekend, me and the missus

were on a hike, and you'll never guess what little Teddy did. So Teddy ran off at the sight of a cow, and then we were off in the pasture. It's just like, dude, I don't care about your dog, your hike, or anything. I just want to get the hell out.

of this meeting. If we're having lunch, tell me about it, okay? Because lunch is where we talk about this stuff, not at stand-up. What are you doing? What did you do? Tell me your effing roadblocks and get the hell out of the way. Why are

stand-ups so bad, by the way? I haven't done a stand-up in about 10 years since joining Netflix. It's been fantastic without stand-ups. I'm not entirely certain how people uh, can become so arrogant with three years of experience, but there you go.

Whoa, this article is a flame war! This article is barbecuing somebody! Yo, if you have a mechanical keyboard at the office, I don't think it necessarily means you're arrogant, but man, that barbecue is set to 500. I like to impress with my job title, who

what do you mean, nobody cares? Whiteboard in the background... Some people in the industry do have degrees. I've worked with doctors, not medical kind, okay? Usually we call those PhDs. Uh, those with qualifications in the industry often choose not to mention them because

within many organizations, there is a reverse snobbery around education. Okay, that's fair. There's kind of... I've seen some of this reverse snobbery, um, but it's it's exceptionally rare and it mostly exists on Twitter. I don't think I've seen it anywhere else, uh, yet.

Others wear glasses without medical reasons, which really happens. Instead of in front of a whiteboard on those video calls... Is he describing LinkedIn or programmers? This seems like a LinkedIn call-out, you know, that one post that inevitably gets around on Twitter from time to time.

That's just like, I watch porn. I don't care who knows; it's on LinkedIn. You're like, "Dude, this guy's unhinged." I'd be more impressed if your whiteboard had, uh, more than a bullet point list. That is, I know you don't understand the

wider architecture of the application. Your whiteboard is like putting makeup on a pig. Damn, zing, zing! All right, here we go. Uh, some have interesting information written on the whiteboard, though. What the hell are you doing, reading a whiteboard? Shut up! Why are you caring?

Stop caring! All right, here we go. Delete the current project. You've entered a new project, and I've seen someone on Twitter recommend that you delete the whole thing and start again. Won't the current team members be somewhat put out, uh,  by the suggestion? What do you mean,

teamwork might be damaged? Just delete it. Okay, whatever. Uh, I mean, a full-on rewrite; there are sometimes benefits to it, but the problem is... so, I mean, the problem with this article right away is that it lacks depth in general. It's very funny ad hominem.

We're all laughing, hahaha, but the reality is that there's a lot of ad hominem in here with not a lot of depth. Um, the thing is that some technologies you choose make it virtually impossible to just do a runtime refactor if you

will. Right, uh, it's really, really hard, right? So like, I mean, real talk: if you choose to write your front end in any framework—Svelte, JavaScript, wait, not JavaScript—Svelte, React, Solid.js—you can't just swap them, right? You can't just do that. It takes a

Lots of you know what I mean, like you can't—you literally have to delete the whole effing thing and start again, right? Uh, but okay. Uh, the Michael Jackson "Black or White"—the programmer can only think in terms of right and wrong, rather than shades of gray, in almost every

circumstance. There's only shades of gray and no right or wrong decisions, apart from a few things. Let's not get, uh, confused, though. When programmers declare that something should just be done in a certain way, they frequently think about their way of doing things.

So what you're trying to say is that there is a way that things should be done, but it's not the way that someone else is suggesting? Do you feel the loopback on this own piece of advice? Yo, bro, you can't make general statements; you're doomed if you do, doomed if you

don't. Like, what, uh, what—it's a loop. Sometimes it doesn't need to be your way or the highway. Uh, perhaps introduce the—perhaps introduce that it depends—a way of thinking—to your software development practices. This is good, but also real

talk. Who here—press one in the chat—who here has been on a team of a bunch of "it depends" CISOs? Deal in absolutes, ideal in absolutes. Press one if you've been on a bunch of "it depends." How fun is that team, right? How fun is

the team that everybody wants to pedant? Like everybody builds their own bike shed constantly, like it's—there's—it's almost equally as bad. I preferred the informed captain approach, which is just have one person—we all go, "Hey, hey Peter, what do we do?" And Peter goes, "Okay, I"

I think we should do this, this, and this, and we go, okay, we'll do that. Peter, we call it at Netflix, we call it the 'informed captain.' Someone just needs to make a decision; we need to just... we just need to move on, right? Just stop... stop with all

this pedantic masturbation. Uh, the Peter Principle. Oh man, this sounds like [name]'s favorite thing. Uh, faster path downwards. Some programmers are well worth a promotion after 12 or even six months, yet it seems many programmers feel that they are entitled to a raise

and a new job title after a few months on the job. The standard of team leads in tech companies does seem pitifully low. New developers quickly move up the chain without technical knowledge for a new advanced role and certainly lack the

people knowledge in order to be an effective team lead. Programming is all about people; they take time to develop. Why is it called the Peter Principle? Is this a reference to Peter, the pillar of the church? What... what's... I don't... is this a Peter I'm

supposed to know? Is it a biblical reference? Peter Griffin? Did he mean the word 'penis'? What is it? I think it's Spider-Man because Spider-Man... wasn't he promoted too quickly and he wasn't ready for his responsibility and his uncle got killed? I think that's what it

means. Okay. If I can relate everything to Spider-Man, I'm going to... Not biblical, clearly. That I just copy the code from Stack Overflow; it seems to work. Let's go. Later that week: 'Can you fix the crash?' You guessed it. Okay, I mean, this is such

An old meme. I don't know anybody that actually does this right. Chad, you don't do this right, chat. Okay, so this one actually sounds great. Lack of curiosity. It's fine to be in it for the money; absolutely. To some extent, every job is about the income you derive from it.

Absolutely. If Netflix cut my income by a tenth, like if they cut it to one-tenth, I'm not like, 'Well, geez, I really love my job,' you know? Like, I get it; there is definitely an income barrier here. However, to really have a

passion and love for your work means that you get so much more out of it and become a much more valued colleague. Absolutely. Your aim is to retire at 40? Not so much, perhaps. That is why you are not so interested in finding out

the origin of that bug, after all. What if you are curious and you just don't want to work at a corporation by the time you're 40? I'm not—hey, I'm not saying I'm going to quit Netflix within the next four years, but I'm just saying that it would be really sweet if I didn't have to work for you at 40. I got them—damn, I'm about to be a farmer

full-time. But why? If you don't enjoy your job and want to improve both yourself and your current project, perhaps it's time to find a new career. Oh my goodness, this little bit is a little intense. I can—you know what? Not everybody has to love it.

I finally came around on it. Not everybody has to love it; you just have to realize what that means. That is, if you don't love it and you're just cashing in, cashing out, you're going to be a kind of stagnant

basic generalist with not a lot of depth. And there's plenty of jobs that need that, right? There's plenty of jobs that like that, plenty of jobs that need it. That's okay; not everybody has to be around, not everyone has to be an Olympian, right? Uh, this article is a

light-hearted look at the following destructive developer behaviors. Okay, I'm a software engineer, not a programmer. Whiteboard in the background to delete the current project; Michael Jackson, Black or White; Peter Principle—still don't know who this Peter is; copy-pasta; lack of curiosity. Conclusion: If you're

displaying one of these signs, it doesn't mean that you're a bad programmer; just playing all seven, you might not be a fantastic developer. Uh, you might not be the fantastic developer you think you are. I let's see, I don't know, though, because I don't know you. See, you want to

know an effective programmer looks like. Look at the article below: Seven signs of a great programmer. Office Space Peter—ooh, none of us even thought about that. Okay, hold on. Uh oh, thank you, thank you. Uh, uh, Twitch, Twitch Jeopardy. Uh, the Peter Principle was laid

out by Canadian educational scholar and sociologist Dr. Lawrence J. Peter in his 1968 book titled *The Peter Principle*. Kind of looks like a dick. Uh, dang it, this is a YouTube video. Uh, the Peter Principle is the concept in management developed by Lawrence J. Peter.

which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of incompetence. Employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent

as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. And that's actually a pretty good principle. I like that. [Music] So you're telling me I can't make a dick joke? That's what you're trying to say?

Karen, then how do I measure my dick in bites if that's such a big deal to you? Huh? Do you know about the pickling algorithm? Oh, you don't? Well, guess what? It's confusing. The name Karen is the dictogen. [Music]

7 Signs Of A Bad Programmer | Prime Reacts

This is a place for all the things that are awesome on stream. 

ThePrimeTime

Introduction and initial thoughts on the 'seven signs of a bad programmer' article.

The speaker introduces the topic and asks viewers to guess how many signs they think apply to them.

The speaker reflects on their emotional state and the article's premise.

The first sign discussed is excessive Twitch viewing.

The speaker discusses the second sign: being unable to focus during stand-up meetings.

An example of unproductive stand-up meetings is given.

Critique and discussion of the article's content and tone.

The speaker comments on the article's aggressive and opinionated style.

Discussion of the article's points regarding mechanical keyboards, job titles, and degrees.

The speaker addresses the article's point about reverse snobbery in the industry.

The speaker analyzes the article's comparison of programmers to LinkedIn posts.

Critique of the article's point about whiteboards and understanding application architecture.

Analysis of specific problematic points raised in the article.

The speaker discusses the suggestion to delete and restart projects.

Critique of the article's lack of depth and reliance on ad hominem attacks.

Discussion of the difficulty of refactoring certain technologies.

Further explanation of the challenges related to frontend framework changes.

The speaker addresses the 'Michael Jackson Black or White' analogy.

Discussion of different team approaches and decision-making styles.

The speaker discusses the 'it depends' approach versus a more decisive leadership style.

The speaker discusses the drawbacks of teams where everyone overthinks decisions.

The speaker introduces the 'informed captain' approach to decision-making.

The speaker advocates for efficient decision-making to avoid unnecessary delays.

Discussion of the Peter Principle and career progression in tech.

The speaker discusses the phenomenon of people being promoted beyond their competence.

The speaker comments on the low standard of team leads in tech companies.

The speaker speculates on the origin and meaning of the Peter Principle.

The speaker discusses the practice of copying code from Stack Overflow.

Discussion on the importance of curiosity and passion in programming.

The speaker acknowledges that financial motivations are valid but emphasizes the value of passion.

The speaker discusses the impact of income on job satisfaction.

The speaker reflects on their personal career goals and aspirations.

The speaker shares their ambition to retire early and pursue other interests.

The speaker concludes that not everyone needs to love their job, but it's important to be aware of the consequences of lacking passion.

Conclusion and summary of the discussion.

The speaker summarizes the seven signs of a bad programmer discussed in the article.

The speaker emphasizes that displaying one or two signs doesn't necessarily make someone a bad programmer.

The speaker mentions the existence of an article on the seven signs of a great programmer.

The speaker explains the Peter Principle, referencing its origin and meaning.

The speaker explains the core concept of the Peter Principle in management.