The Egotistical Programmer

[swatts]

Hello Humble Programmers,

The wonderful Brian Powell wrote a series of excellent articles that can be found here.

You can also listen to his face noises here.

For those too busy/lazy to follow links the synopsis is to be a great programmer you need to throw off designer ego and be humble.

Well I'm a bloody brilliant programmer and have a massive ego so there! <--- that's a joke.......honest...

But I truly believe that there is a paradox here. I'll tell a little story to elaborate my theory.

Chatting to lovely eldest daughter yesterday and the conversation turns to her friends group, the dynamic is that she has 5 extremely close friends who she's grown up with. Some of their other friends want access to this close group and get jealous, this jealousy leads to controlling behaviour on some of the more susceptible members of the close group, teetering on the edge of bullying. This outrages my daughter and she exclaimed "They think they are so important that they should always be involved". Her perspective was that their egos were large. My diagnosis was that actually they were acting from a point of small or damaged ego.

The point here is to act without ego you need a healthy/large ego. In fact the very terms large or small are incorrect in my opinion. Let's talk in terms of healthy and unhealthy egos.

The programmer who hides his code is often deemed to be arrogant, whereas I would say that their ego is unhealthy. 

In summary egoless programming requires programmers who have healthy egos.

The only way to get your programming ego healthy is delivery, in my opinion. You convince your ego that you are a good programmer by producing lots of good programs. The only way to judge a good program is if the user is happy with it and you.

I also suspect that the standard industry management technique of hammering people with tight deadlines and impossible goals chips away at the ego. In fact I've worked in places where this verges on policy so their prized assets don't look for jobs or ask for raises because their egos have been shattered. Oh! people with healthy egos are less manageable too.

You need to look after your ego, it's central to you!

To get the ball rolling.

YOU, yes you, I'm looking at you, you're a miracle. 6 Billion years in the making, you make shaped clouds in the air, constructs of pure imagination. I'm astonished to know you.

Lots of love

Steve