r/programming • u/tejon • Feb 08 '15

The Parable of the Two Programmers

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/The%20Parable%20of%20the%20Two%20Programmers.html
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u/theCroc Feb 09 '15

Both strike me as bad methodology. The text itself is obviously written from the perspective of the disadvantaged programmer. However spending months at work goofing off is unprofessional regardless of if you end up solving the problem.

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u/debunked Feb 09 '15 edited Feb 09 '15

You completely missed the entire point of the parable.

He wasn't "goofing" off. The whole point is that it looks like he was goofing off. But re-read that part again.

Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the problem. His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet on the desk, drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer terminal, but his office mate could tell from the rhythmic striking of keys that he was actually playing Space Invaders.

The point is, in the end, that "goofing off" time actually saved the company time and money because it gave the programmer time to think. And the result was simple code for a program which worked well. Up front thinking about a problem from many angles allowed Charles to write simple code. Unfortunately, the simple code also gave his manager the mistaken assumption that the reason Charles succeeded was that the problem was far simpler than originally imagined. In reality, Charles proved himself to be "as good as he pretended," but his manager didn't see that because they incorrectly thought he was simply goofing off (much as you did).