Oh man… I remember reading this years ago and aspiring to be the Fantastic Programmer.
This did NOT age well. Seriously consider some of the traits that this article is describing and play the game “Are We Describing a Programmer or a Zuckerburgian Psychopath?”
- A tendency to suggest wacky and unrealistic solutions in meetings
- Routinely applies for an extension to file taxes
- Antagonistic when asked to maintain code for
backwards-compatability - Dropped out of high-school, university, law or medical school because they didn’t see the point anymore
- Disinterested by the outcome of elections
- Cashes-in their 401k to fund their next venture
- Has tried every pick-up line there is and has the slap-marks on his cheeks to prove it
- Owns swag from Enron
- They suddenly pause and stare into space in the middle of a conversation, then abandon you to hurry back to their terminal with no explanation
- A destructive pursuit of perfection
- Contempt for delivery dates
- Substantial refactoring on the eve of a deadline
This reads very much like a tech bro wrote it
The writer assumes the reader is a man also. They use he and they to refer to programmers, but never she. The only time she is used in this entire document is referring to a woman delivering your code:
The outcome you should be thinking of is a lady who’s going to get fired if she doesn’t deliver the output of your program at 4:59pm sharp.
A cubicle or desk populated with toys that came from ThinkGeek
What year is it?
checks git blame
Oh… 2014. That checks out.
Man, I used to really like browsing the stuff at ThinkGeek. Even bought a few things. Now that it’s owned by… I wanna say GameStop?.. it’s ceased to be interesting to me. I liked things like the laundry basket that looked like a radioactive barrel, the shower gel that looks like a blood bag… that kind of light-hearted novelty stuff. But the new owner just gutted all the interesting content, and it’s just all IP collectables now.
It’s been long enough I forgot bout ThinkGeek. Damn. Wish something like it were still around.
I still use my Bag of Holding, haven’t found a messenger bag that comes close. Mid 2000’s ThinkGeek was the best. I still mourn the loss of them.
