Theory of programming style incompatibility: it is possible for two or more engineers, each of whom is individually highly skilled, to be utterly incapable of working together productively. In fact, the problem of style incompatibility might actually increase with the skill level of the programmers.
This shouldn’t be that surprising: Proust and Hemingway might both be gifted writers capable of producing beautiful novels, but a novel co-authored by the two of them would probably be terrible.
Like, part of being ‘highly skilled’ as a programmer is being able to work with other people. I mean, I get what you are saying, but working with assholes is part of the devs tool bag, or he hasn’t been a dev very long.
Is that really a programming skill though? Aren’t most fields of human endeavor theoretically improved by being able to work with people, making it something of a generic skill? Alternately, if cooperation is domain specific enough to be a ‘programming’ skill then it seems like some programmers are amazing even if they lack that skill.
Various novels have been written by two authors, but I wouldn’t say the inability to co-write with an arbitrary makes one a terrible author. Good Omens was amazing, but I’m not sure that Pratchett and Stephen King hypothetically failing to work well together makes either of them a bad writer. This is less obvious in less clearly subjective fields, but I think it might still be true.
It’s worth noting that “Gah, I can’t work with that guy, I’m too highly skilled in my own amazing paradigm!” is more often a warning sign of different problem rather than a correct diagnosis of this one.
Theory of programming style incompatibility: it is possible for two or more engineers, each of whom is individually highly skilled, to be utterly incapable of working together productively. In fact, the problem of style incompatibility might actually increase with the skill level of the programmers.
This shouldn’t be that surprising: Proust and Hemingway might both be gifted writers capable of producing beautiful novels, but a novel co-authored by the two of them would probably be terrible.
That seems rather obvious to me.
Kind of...
Like, part of being ‘highly skilled’ as a programmer is being able to work with other people. I mean, I get what you are saying, but working with assholes is part of the devs tool bag, or he hasn’t been a dev very long.
Is that really a programming skill though? Aren’t most fields of human endeavor theoretically improved by being able to work with people, making it something of a generic skill? Alternately, if cooperation is domain specific enough to be a ‘programming’ skill then it seems like some programmers are amazing even if they lack that skill.
Various novels have been written by two authors, but I wouldn’t say the inability to co-write with an arbitrary makes one a terrible author. Good Omens was amazing, but I’m not sure that Pratchett and Stephen King hypothetically failing to work well together makes either of them a bad writer. This is less obvious in less clearly subjective fields, but I think it might still be true.
It’s worth noting that “Gah, I can’t work with that guy, I’m too highly skilled in my own amazing paradigm!” is more often a warning sign of different problem rather than a correct diagnosis of this one.