People who write bad code…

“People who write bad code spend their lives fixing it. That’s one big reason they’re so slow.”

– Kevin Barnes on his Code Craft weblog

Kevin makes this statement while trying to answer why great coders get paid to little.

I think the underlying principle is quite simple: it is very hard to know if a programmer is really good. Or, in Kevins words “the manager has only a fairly limited capacity to recognize the skill of the engineer”. Anybody can call himself a programmer or web developer.

While you think about this, do read coding horror’s Why can’t programmers.. program? The answer seems to be “Hire Tough”.

With all these programmers blogging about the art and craft of programming, the question rises: how good are these writers themselves? How good a programmer am I?