I have to say, I really didn't like the document much. Not because of substance. Some of what he says is true.

On style, though, I think the document is trash. Some of what I say is probably even a bit ad hominem.

Most of the good programmers I know don't spend time worrying about bad programmers. They just write good code and cleanup bad code when they see it.

If someone feels compelled to write up an essay about bad programmers, he probably spends a lot of time dealing with bad programmers.

That experience should lead to humility, not arrogance. If you deal with a lot of bad programmers, you might not be as good as you think you are. After all, you work at the same place on the same project as a bunch of bad programmers. They where hired under the same standards as you.

To me, the document just seemed like arrogant posturing. An attempt at crafting a "negative identity" (define a group by vilifying the outsider). The best way to "be", and to be recognized as, a good programmer is to write good code. All the other stuff is just horse shit.

dropbox. still.

It's fairly ironic--Google is restricting the page views (to limit bandwidth usage), but at that same time they're hosting a copy in cache of that same page, with no limits.

Google cache for those who hit the "pageview limit exceeded" nonsense:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=clnk...

Oh! I thought that was the joke. The sign that you're a bad programmer is that you implement a page rate limit on one of your properties (google sites), only to serve up the exact same page out of another one of your properties (google cache) thus accomplishing exactly nothing

Just out of personal curiosity, you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up?

For example I consider myself a reasonable programmer, I can certainly do any project put in front of me. But I failed a YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings.

I learned the following issues completely stop me from being able to program:

1. Someone waiting on an immediate answer.

2. Someone watching/listening to my though process.

3. Not being able to experiment with the code on a computer.

That didn't cut it for them because apparently at YouTube a lot of your programming is done over the phone (sarcasm).

I guess my point is, try to think of the exact tasks this hire would be doing, and ask them to do that. Will they really be writing recursive functions often? Also if possible give them a take home project, so they can work in a more natural environment.

It's accurate that what we have is not insurance. Real health insurance would look more like life insurance, with fixed premiums that can't increase if your health degrades over time.

My car insurance doesn't cover an oil change. Nor would any reasonable person expect it to. Normal costs are not something to be insured against. Having customers pay out of pocket for most health care costs would create market pressure to reduce these costs. Does my perfectly healthy baby need a doctor with ten years' schooling to give him a vaccination? No. On the other side of the coin, if I'm paying for it, wait times would decrease. Maybe I'm willing to pay a little bit of a premium if an appointment means being seen when my appointment is scheduled for rather than a half hour later.

What prevents this happening is perverse incentives from federal (and state) income tax policy. Employer provided health "insurance" can be paid for with before-tax dollars.

Amazing fact: those who aren't young and healthy consume a disproportionate amount of health care. The only way to bring down the cost of health care is to make people more frugal, and no one is ever frugal with someone else's money.