These Warriors Use Stealth and War Skills to Write Computer Code | Hacker News Reader

These Warriors Use Stealth and War Skills to Write Computer Code

online.wsj.com

11 pointsbluesmoon18 comments

Open articleView on HN

Reclusive assassins aren't that much better than asketic mystics ("Zen coders", "Perl monks").

Can't I just be a Code Casanova? A Procedural Pimp? A Googlin' Gigolo?

But I shall diminish, go into the office, and remain a programmer.

A Java jouster

lances hazards far and 'yond

with cruft but correct.

Digital Ditch Digger.

I cant stand this rockstar/ninja nomenclature. It makes me cringe.

Rockstars are loud & noisy, maybe they get stuff done. Frequently care more about what people think about them then the quality of their work.

Ninjas do the job, and nobody knows until it’s too late.

I'm not seeing desirable qualities here for coders.

Modern ninjas do most of their work in no-harm kidnappings due to Japan's idiosyncratic (no reciprocity) and somewhat xenophobic custody laws. If your spouse is ethnic Japanese and flees to Japan with your child, and you have legal custody but live elsewhere, Japan won't surrender the child.

That applies to other places in Asia and the middle east (go arabic ninja, I guess?)

I'm sure the lower-ranking Saudi princes could use something to do.

Yeah. These are definitely stopwords when reading job postings. Luckily, they're generally applied at the top or even in the title.

If you advertise for Ninjas or Rockstars, you deserve every candidate you get.

<obvious>They should replace "rockstar", "hero", and "ninja" with "douchebag"; it's just as unprofessional, but more accurately describes the people who'd describe themselves with any of those labels.</obvious>

Interviewer: How would you describe yourself?

Candidate: I'm a code ninja!

Interviewer: Thank you for your time. We'll, er, be in touch.

It's fine and good to be a bit quirky, but once you start referring to your resume as a "character sheet", you need to step back for a second.

That sort of shenanigans almost got a friend of mine hired at a shop -- until she revealed that she wasn't a coder and was applying for a clerical/support position.

Well, after ninja coders, we now have ninja bakers: http://www.ninjabread.co.uk/b3ta/remove-sleeve-and-film.jpg

Ok, this made me laugh, and coming so close to this story, it could hardly be a co-incidence, so I had to share.

I like Peter Drucker's theory.

As for Amazon, I have a "Ninja Coder" sticker in view as a type; as relating to martial arts, the question I answered to get it was at about the induction physical level.

More fuel for the fire from jQuery's lead developer: http://jsninja.com/

Cute mainstream article that gives the ignorant masses a phony Hollywood view of what it's like to be a programmer.

A real day in the life of a rockstar/ninja/whatever isn't so glamorous:

- Review actual results of Run #27 and compare to expected results. Isolate 4 discrepencies.

- Scour through 1200 lines of code, looking for obvious flaws that would have produced 4 discrepencies.

- Isolate functions and run new test.

- Enter debugger and enable trace checkpoints.

- Realize it's been 6 hours since you farted. Fart.

- Revise test data and run again.

- Modify checkpoints and build fresh logs.

- Add 9 more outliers to test cases.

- Put logs on another session. Find glasses.

- Grab a soda and some chips. Read the source code again.

- Call wife. Have dinner without me.

- Run one more test. Still have discrepencies.

- Realize the expected results were calculated wrong and your program was right all along. You ninja. Log off.

My interpretation: the submission of this article is a subtle protest of the site's lack of support for downvoting submissions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com