The Accidental Programmer

I've been in the software field for some time now, and over the years I have worn many hats. I have been the sole developer in a psychopharmacological research lab; I have been a private contractor and security analyst; I have developed human resources software and data warehouses; I've been a programmer, a tech lead, a project manager, a VP, and a partner. I've hired and fired developers, laid off friends (and a fiancee), and interviewed at least a hundred candidates locally and overseas.

In all of my experience, I've discovered an unavoidable and intolerable fact: most programmers can't program. Just so we're clear, by "most programmers," I'm talking roughly 90 - 95 percent. Now, I know this isn't an original sentiment. Jeff Atwood talked about this in 2007 in an article which has since been quoted by dozens of people in the development community including folks like Phil Haack. So, if it's an already beaten dead horse, why am I writing about it again?

Well, frankly, I was wondering why there are so many bad programmers out there who seem evidently to be doing so well. Why are there so many crappy programmers getting work and making bank? Look at how many large companies are learning hard lessons from off-shoring experiences, yet everybody still wants to send work overseas! It's like there's a big chronic "WTF barrier" between business people thinking they could save a few bucks and programmers telling them how much it'll cost them in the long run.

Why doesn't anybody notice? Why doesn't everybody realize that these people don't know what they're doing? Well, it's because they produce programs that partially work. Jeff's right that most programmers can't even write a single line of code, so how is it that they manage to produce work that's functional enough to convince the world that they're capable developers? Well, I figured it out. They do it by accident; I call them accidental programmers.

By combining the forces of the internet, feature rich IDEs, code templating, and auto completion, an accidental programmer has all the tools he or she needs to accidentally write a semi-functional bad program without ever having to write a real line of code.

Now, I am sure my readers wouldn't let me get away with making such claims without providing empirical evidence, so here are some code snippets I believe you couldn't write on purpose:

tbPassword.Text.Trim().ToString().Trim();

protected void btnLogin_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SqlClientUtilities sqlData = new SqlClientUtilities();
    SqlDataReader drPassinfo = null;

    string sLoginSQL = "select a.agentid,u.userName,a.FirstName,a.Lastname from dbo.person a, dbo.users u where  ";
    sLoginSQL +=  "  a.userid = u.userid and u.username='" + txtUserName.Text.Trim() + "'";
    sLoginSQL += " AND personid = '" + txtPassword.Text.Trim() + "'";

    drPassinfo = sqlData.SqlClientExecuteDataReader(sLoginSQL);

    if (drPassinfo.HasRows)
    {
        AppSupportUtils.WriteError("Records found");

        //valid login - redirect
        Session["userlogin"] = txtUserName.Text.Trim();
        Response.Redirect("Manage.aspx",false);
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// This class just returns an object which holds a date
/// </summary>
public class Date
{
    public int Year = 0;
    public int Month = 0;
    public int Day = 0;

    public Date()
    {
        Year = 1901;
        Month = 1;
        Day = 1;
    }

    public Date(System.DateTime dt)
        : this()
    {
        Year = dt.Year;
        Month = dt.Month;
        Day = dt.Day;
    }

    public Date(string dt)
        : this()
    {
        // en-US     M/d/yyyy
        CultureInfo MyCultureInfo = new CultureInfo("en-US");
        try
        {
            DateTime MyDateTime = DateTime.Parse(dt, MyCultureInfo);
            Year = MyDateTime.Year;
            Month = MyDateTime.Month;
            Day = MyDateTime.Day;
        }
        catch { ;}
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return Month.ToString() + "/" + Day.ToString() + "/" + Year.ToString();
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        return (int)(Year * 12) + (Month * 30) + Day;
    }
}

function invertBool(bool)
{
  if (bool == false) return true;
  return false;
}

function sendSecureVote(index)
{
  var checksum = Math.round(getFormattedDate() * 57 / 33 - 147 + 2009);
  startAjaxRequest("http://www.theserverhasbeenanonymized.com/voteCounter.php?checksum=" + checksum + "&voteFor=" + index);
}

function getFormattedDate()
{
  var date = new Date();
  return date.getMonth() + date.getDate() + date.getHours();
}

var ssnValidator = /[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]/;