Equivalence

I’ve been reading some interviews recently (Coders at Work) and one interviewee (I can’t remember who, but I think it was Fran Allen) suggested that in the last 20 years programming languages have not progressed leaps and bounds as they appeared to in the early days. Are they right?

Personally, I think this might be a good call. How different are the currently programming languages from C? OK, today’s popular duo, Java and C#, have garbage collection and thus we don’t have to deal with those troublesome pointers. Then again, both LISP and Smalltalk have had garbage collection for a long long time. C# has lambda expressions, and other higher-level functions, but then again this stuff was around in LISP since day dot. It’s almost as if the “C-style” languages are battling to catch up with things like LISP – which is a language I’ve never used other than for some emacs hacking. However, LISP has been around since 1959, so why has it taken so long for people to realise that many of its features are incredibly useful? Have we been held back by the fact that most academics don’t really care too much about this kind of stuff, and so don’t push it, and industry is too busy telling us something needs to be done last week?

First, I know that there are academics who do care about this stuff but I don’t think there are enough. And by virtue of being an academic, they are not exposed to many of the problems that are faced by your every-day software developer, and as such, maybe they don’t see the future so well. Thus is it up to industry to innovate at this level? If it is, I don’t see us moving too far forward from our current situation in the next few years. Why?

Well, most small to medium sized software houses are not exactly making money in significantly large quantities to warrant throwing it away on research that some other company making similar software will use to create a similar/better product. So instead of spending money pushing forward the state of the art, you would be insane not to spend that money on making a better product. This combined with crazy schedules, does not leave much in the way of time for forward thinking.

So it appears that we need to rest our hopes on the large enterprises like Microsoft, Google, et al. It’s fair to say that these companies invest a significant amount on money in research, some of which goes toward trying to make programming languages better (F# and Go for example). However taking these two languages as examples we see that F# doesn’t appear to push that many boundaries, and I can’t comment too much on Go, as I’ve not looked at it closely, but it also doesn’t seem to include too many radical switches. Maybe radical does not sit well with shareholders, I dunno.

The thing is, I’m not professing to contain much insight on this either, and I’m not even sure I know what I mean by a radical switch. I just know it doesn’t appear that academia or industry are moving this forward quick enough – if the last 20 years is anything to go by. The only remaining vehicle for change is the programming “community” as a whole, but how much traction we can have is debatable. That said, we do need to move in a different direction, I’m sure of that, and maybe things like multi-core processors may force us kicking and screaming in that new direction. However maybe the problem is even deeper than this, and a switch away from the whole Von Neumann architecture is required. Who knows? Well, I hope someone does!

programming computer industry, future of programming, programming languages

There comes a time in every programmers life when they have to learn new things and step out the box. Yeah it’s difficult, for sure. It’s all too easy to create the latest application in your software empire, using a language you’ve been developing in for the last 10 years. However, the real problem is thinking this is the only choice. When is it time to abandon this certitude?

First, we cover the forced abandonment. This is when you are pushed kicking and screaming into pastures new, whether you like it or not, i.e. the new job. Here, not only is the new language curve ball thrown (viciously), but you also get whole new set of business rules into the bargain. So what do you do? You program the new language like the old one, only translating the syntax in your head. This is not the best way to learn a language though. Why? Well consider those C programmers trying to program imperatively in Java, Java programmers in JavaScript, C++ programmers in Ruby, and so on. When there is a change in paradigm this mapping strategy just doesn’t work – a similar situation exists with languages that contain a more powerful expression set. It also encourages the behaviour where people learning enough to get the job done, without understanding what is really happening, or that there may have been a better way using “unmappable” language’s features. A better approach would be to write something small, and new, that allows you to explore the language’s features. I’m sure most people can think of something they could write. Furthermore, if you can make it useful to other people, or even your new employer, then everyone’s a winner! This is something I touched on before.

For many people though, this is the only time they will ever consider abandoning. This is sad, and a poor characteristic in a programmer. And to be honest, I just don’t understand it. That’s not to say that I don’t accept that people just do programming as a job, then go home and don’t think about it. However, it’s like most things in life, it’s nice to progress?

As a programmer there will also be other signs that the tide is turning, and you don’t have to be too alert to spot these. Previously I wrote “Perl is Dead, Long Live…Perl?” and being a big Perl fan it was sad to see the language apparently dying, so I know what it’s like. Some signs to look out for may be:

• the language features are not moving on (Java watch your back) – the people who created it no longer care,
• the community surrounding the language is dwindling – the people who use it no longer care,
• there is little in the way of choice when selecting libraries/frameworks – the experts have fled,
• other programmers have never heard of it – there is no buzz,
• jobs using it are few and far between – businesses have given up on it, the death kneel.

However, this is all not to say that you give up on your language just because it’s no longer cool – popularity is by no means a great indicator that something will suit your needs. It need not be the case that you give up on your language of choice, instead it could be that you contribute and drag the language forward. But be careful with this one.

Finally, any decent employer will want to see that you are continually developing your skill set – their business needs are continually evolving, so why aren’t you? You are much more likely to land a better job if you contribute to your own education in some way. It looks good and it’s also something to talk about.

So go out and learn something new today, and stop sticking with what you know.

Observations, programming C#, education, Java, JavaScript, jobs, learning, programming language, Ruby

Programmers at times can take themselves, and their abilities, a little too seriously. The fact is that programming, in general, is just not that difficult. Sure, there are parts of it that are tricky but, at the risk of over generalising, the capabilities required by your run of the mill programmer are not that high. Are you sure I hear you say?

Well plucking figures right out the air I’d say that around 90% of applications involve a simple CRUD model. So what we are essentially doing is gathering data, processing data, and writing this data to the database. Two-thirds of this process is pretty simple, i.e. gathering the data and writing it to the database, this leaves the possibilities for hardness in the processing data phase.

Again in most situations the processing of data is pretty simple with no complex db manipulation or algorithmic mind games. Consider your typical web application for example. The processing of data is minimal, with little to no algorithmic work involved at all – I mean with Twitter there is literally nothing to do. Google on the other hand has lots to do: it has to make those search results shine. This is not to say that developing Twitter is simple, as the scaling issues will make your head hurt. However, scaling problems are only going to affect a very very small number of sites out there, but due to their ubiquity they are the ones we hear most about.

If all this programming nonsense is so easy then surely it’s difficult to make bad software?

Nope. The fact is that the only people who care what the code looks like are other developers. The code underneath could be shitter than an incredibly shitty shit and the end user wouldn’t know. As long as it carries out the task that they require the software to do, in a reasonably efficient and user friendly way, no one really cares. Oh apart from other developers.

Obviously nice structured code, that is easy to understand, free of bugs, and a maintenance dream is a good building block. However, it is by no means a guarantee that you are on to a winner. Marketing, user experience and coolness are all equally important, actually, they are probably much more important. I obviously can’t say for sure but I would imagine there are plenty of successful software products that are badly written but tick these boxes – maybe even most successful products, as they are free from the burden of the studious programmer.

So, essentially what I’m trying to say is that despite programming not being that difficult there are many other more important factors that contribute to the success of a software product. Many software products do their job, but the one that will be successful is the one that does it well.

All this is not to say that programming well is not important. On the contrary, it’s important to other developers who you work with and that is not to be underestimated. This is a topic for discussion another time though!

Finally, for those non-programmers out there, don’t start shouting “If it’s so simple why does it take so long”? Well just because something is easy it does mean there are not lots of easy things to do. I mean, hammering a nail into a piece of wood is pretty simple, right? But if I asked you to hammer 10 million nails into a bit of wood it would take you a long time. Remember this marketers and project managers.

Observations, architecture, marketing, programming good practices, programming, sucessful software

We are all well aware of the dangers of strong coupling: for me, the most dangerous being the increased maintenance costs in such a system. Much has been discussed about coupling and measures such as dependency injection are used to help control it.

However, as far as a Google search leads me to believe, but I didn’t search too hard, not much has been said about the strong coupling that can exist between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or at least something different, from others but many times in recent weeks I have found that the dependencies between these files can be rather tight and restrictive.

To understand what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at an example. Consider the following snippets of an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files respectively:

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<div id="main_wrapper">
    <h2>Header</h2>
    <div id="content"></div>
</div>

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#main_wrapper {
    color: #FFFFFF
}

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$('#main_wrapper').attr('color', '#000000');

As you can see the id is referenced in at least three different places. Well so what?

The problem, as I see it, comes from the fact that it is more than likely these files will be maintained by different people. For example, a designer is likely to maintain the HTML and CSS files and a developer the JavaScript file. In the days before JavaScript proliferation, this maybe wasn’t such a problem. However, with the rise of jQuery and its awesomeness the landscape has changed a little.

In fact, jQuery actually compounds the problem, as we have all become accustomed to seeing JavaScript code littered with things like $('#main_wrapper'), i.e. CSS selectors are referenced throughout the code base. What this means is that when the designer changes the structure of the HTML file, or the class names and ids, it can have unexpected side effects.

The easy (part) solution to all this is that when you create ids and classes you never change/remove them or their container – or at least you never change them without searching globally rather than just locally. I’m not sure how restrictive this is though, maybe those with far more experience of this than I do can offer up some more constructive thoughts? Are designers are just not used to such constraints? I dunno?

To me it just seems like a hassle having to keep track of selectors, ids, and classes in so many different places. It seems to go against the spirit of good programmer where we try to localised any side effects when changes are made. With the above way of working this doesn’t seem possible – and combined with the divided level of responsibility between designers and developers, I imagine this causes an increase in the number of bugs and also in the cost of maintenance.

Maybe others don’t see this as an issue at all? Maybe I’m doing designers around the world a disservice? You decide.

At the moment I can’t offer up any better solutions, as I have not really thought about it too much yet. When I do though, I’ll be sure to report back

JavaScript, programming, web design CSS, designers, developers, html, JavaScript, jQuery

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I object to the use of the word geek. I’d always imagined that a geek was someone who was obsessive about computer programming. Lately though I’ve seen people use it in a way that is beginning to annoying me – it’s used to describe someone who simply uses the latest and greatest software or gadgets. This was brought to a head when I clicked a link in a tweet (thanks Colin!) which sent me to an article called “Top 10 Ways to Provoke a Geek Argument“.

I mean, I like to think I’m a geek, sad, but true. However, if the things mentioned in that article are likely to incite an argument in a geek, then I ain’t a geek. True geeks laughs in the face of such insults. So bearing all this in mind I say a real geek is someone who takes offense when:

1. someone states that programming is just a day job;
2. someone tells you they work in IT/computing and they can’t program – this often comes in the form of a third-person telling you their friend works in IT just like you!
3. someone tells you that the technology used doesn’t matter;
4. someone’s role call of programming languages does not extend to at least 4 and they don’t know at least one dynamic language – real brownie points go to those who know a functional language;
5. someone shifts a conversation about programming to something else – oh yes, including girls, well maybe not!
6. a developer tells you they don’t have broadband at home;
7. someone states that Agile development is essentially the same as the Waterfall model;
8. someone becomes a “developer” during a one year Masters conversion course – in particular sociology and arts students;
9. a “developer” tells you they want to be a manager;
10. people don’t think they’re a geek.

There you go, if you don’t agree with these then you ain’t a geek! However, you are at least one tenth of one!

Observations, programming

I love frameworks. You love frameworks. We ALL love frameworks. As web developers we just can’t get enough of these things. They’re everywhere: from Rails, to MS MVC, to CakePHP, to Django, and so on. I’m so obssessed with frameworks that I spend more time thinking about what one to use than actually using it. But this is not the only problem, as after choosing one, your problems can really start.

On a project that I have been intermitently working on for a little while now I chose to use CakePHP. The reason for this choice? Well first, I had a pretty good knowledge of PHP as I wrote my own little PHP framework when web frameworks were a mere twingle in their daddies eyes. Second, PHP is widely supported on shared hosting – though Ruby is catching up (that said, I’ve experienced some horrors with Ruby hosting). The widespread availability of PHP also means that PHP hosting tends to be cheaper.

Anyway, this is all beside the point. My real issue is with the size and complexity of these frameworks. Just the other day I was looking to do something as simple as validate an input that was supplied as an HTML POST parameter. Pretty simple right? Well it ended up taking me a disproportionate amount of time to do this task.

The first port of call was to find out if the framework itself supported this, which to my delight CakePHP (1.2) delivered on. Now it was down to the trawl/skim through the documentation trying to figure out how to actually do it. I found what I presumed done the task – basically I was required to add the appropriate validation rules to my model. Thus I added the following:

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<?php
class Section extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'Section';
    var $actsAs = array('Tree');
    var $validate = array( 'name' => array('rule' => alphaNumeric,
                                           'required' => false,
                                           'message' => 'Alpha numerics only'));
}
?>

Then in my controller I simply called the validate method:

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if(!$this->Section->validates()) {
    parent::handleAJAXError($this->Section->validationErrors);
    return;
}

What happened? NOTHING! I passed data that should have failed and it passed. SHIT! I then decided to check to see that the rules were getting parsed so changed the required key in the rules to true, and passed nothing in. Now it worked – it asked me to specify the parameter. My logic was therefore it can see the data and the rules are getting parsed so what the hell is happening!

By this point I had spent quite some time trying to figure this all out. To be honest, I could have written the validation code quicker. So that’s what I decided to do. Yes I reinvented the wheel, it took me around 5 mins, dwarfing the hours I had spent trying to get the stupid library validation code to work. Not only that, much of the supposed benefits offered by using the built in validation code was of no use to me – it wasn’t built around AJAX requests. So what is the moral of this story?

Well it’s read the documentation better, don’t run the most stupid tests, and don’t charge-in thinking you know how everything works! WHAT I hear you say?!

If only I had taken more care when reading, eh the first paragraph, in the documentation I would have observed this:

First, set the data to the model:

$this->ModelName->set( $this->data );

Whoops I never done this. Basically I wasn’t EVER passing in any data to validate, which makes my shocking test of changing the required to true to convince myself the rules and data were being parsed an absolute joke. Rushing in to write my hand crafted code is as bad as the other old chestnut of complaining “there is a bug in the compiler” – c’mon we have all said it The only thing I can credit myself with here is that after a recent 4 week holiday I was stubborn enough to not give up and go back an look at it. Therefore, if there is anything to learn from this experience it’s that before starting something make sure you have taken the time to either read the documentation or listen to those trying to guide you. Oh and have a certain amount of stubbornness about you – not too much though.

php, programming CakePHP, php, validation, web frameworks

As developers we are often faced with the issue of time vs. quality. Let’s face it though, we could spend forever getting it all just right, from documentation right through to unit testing. However, there has got to be a point when you let it go and see how it flies.

This is particularly true when you are faced with a real-world optimization problem, e.g. scheduling, time tabling, process optimization.  Often with this type of problem it is very difficult to obtain an optimal solution. However, I find the more time you spend on the problem the better you understand it, which normally leads to an improved model.  In turn, the improved model leads to a better solution, or an equivalent solution found in a shorter time.

This begs the question when do you give up and say it’s finished?

To be honest, I’m not sure what the answer is to that. As a developer I want to keep on going, hoping to pull the rabbit out the bag, but as an employer, I just want the thing done good enough to have a competitive edge.

The same goes for unit testing – especially at a startup. In this setting you are NOTHING until you get your product out the door, and until you do, you are hoping and praying that no one beats you to the punch. Some people say that quality shines through, but how bright it shines I’m not sure.  Take myspace as the perfect example. It has no redeeming features - it just got there before everyone else. Does anyone know a band not on myspace though?

However, Google proved that the best product can establish its market regardless of its starting position – I now find it difficult to believe that I thought Altavista was good. It’s important to remember though that for every Google there is a myspace (or the ipod, for that fact) where the first is not the best, but people have invested too much time in their choice to change (or in the case of the ipod, maybe it’s fashion outshining functionality).

So what IS the answer to when is the software ready to go? Maybe the simple answer is “whenever someone is willing to buy it”!

programming, startup ipod, myspace, optimization problem, process optimization, startup

Back in ancient times and right up until relatively recently (mid 1400s) scribes were used to copy important documents for kings, queens and other nobility.  It’s hard to imagine that most people couldn’t write back then, and I suspect (but can’t find any hard facts) that many many people still had difficulties writing until the beginning of the 1900s.

However, the job of a scribe became almost redundant overnight with the invention of moveable type. At this point we began to see a power shift, as documents were easily copied and translated, and distributed to the masses.  Obviously there was still the hurdle of learning to read, but now many important documents were available to more than just a handful of people – prior to this reading such documents was limited to the nobility and the clergy.

Moveable type was the most popular form of distributing documents and information right up to the modern day. However, with the advent of computers and the internet, this has changed for good.

Today we find less and less people reading books, but instead we mindfully overdose ourselves on blogs and social networking sites.  This information exchange only serves to benefit each and every one of us, as now we can observe opinions that are not dependent on the views of an editor whom we share little to nothing in common.

It’s easy to see how jobs have transformed over the centuries, once coveted jobs are now in the hands of “amateurs”; who to their credit provide content that is more pertinent to the interested party.  So where does this leave us as software developers?  How will our roles stand up with the future in mind?

If we think back to what I said earlier, about how not too long ago most people couldn’t even write, and consider that the computer was out of reach, both financially and physically, of most people, but now both these things are the norm in society.  So just as everyone learned to write, is everyone going to learn to program?

OK, you may be thinking that a field like mathematics has been around a long long time, and that not everyone is competent in even basic mathematics.  However, let’s face facts, a general programming task is nowhere near a difficult as even high-school level mathematics. That’s not to say there does not exist difficult computing tasks; in fact I’m hoping to convince you of the opposite.

Is it that crazy to think that one day people will program a computer in the same vein as we read and write English (insert your native tongue here)?  I don’t think so. Programming is not really that difficult (doing it well is as difficult as writing beautifully in English, and that has never stoped people writing, look at me). Just as blogs and the internet pulled down the barrier for each and every one of us to write and be heard, I feel it’s only a matter of time before programming computers becomes something more akin to what many will do in everyday life.

If we look closely the first steps are underway. People are using HTML, CSS and JavaScript as if they were everyday things.  They may be doing them under the veil of certain tools, but the “non-programmers” are programming.  They may not even know they are doing it, and the ability to make more complex applications is only going to get easier.

For example, consider writing a database application for an online bicycle shop using CakePHP (something I have experience of, hence the inclusion). You have to know almost nothing about using a database to create this application. OK, you may say that scaling and optimising these things takes a “professional”, but at the rate we are pushing the technology, this barrier may not be there on 5-10 years time – consider the cloud computing environments as a step in this direction.

What I’m not saying here is that all computing is easy. There are still problems that are difficult to solve and require much much more than simply following a fixed set of instructions. Indeed, this is the domain where us developers must start focusing.

There may be many readers out there that think this is all nonsense and that programming computers is always going to be an elite occupation. Just tell that to the scribes, journalists and the media presenters/organisations, whose occupations have either vanished or are suffering severe contraction. Many of these occupations never seen it coming (or refused to see it coming) and done nothing -  but just remember how quick this actually happened to each group. Do you want to be in the same position?

Observations, programming future of programming, programming, software developers

In the last couple of days I have had a chance to do a little bit of pair programming.  In the past I have found myself being a touch sceptical of it all, but predictably I hadn’t actually done much.  So here are some thoughts from my recent experience.

Firstly, I must admit it was only half pair programming, in the sense that I was only an observer and not a driver.

I would say that my biggest concern with pair programming is I found it hard to believe that there would not be a drop in overall productivity with two people concentrating on the same task.  However, I’m beginning to think that, counter intuitively, this may not be the case, but it also depends on the task.

For example, when two people have a completely different skill sets and both skill sets are required for the job.  In my case, I knew literally nothing about the programming language we were developing in.  However, I had a fair amount of knowledge with regards to the “API” we were coding to (fair amount meaning I wrote it!).  As a result of this I knew what we were trying to achieve but just not how to achieve it.  In this situation the pair programming seem to go very well and I would suspect that the functionality was added to the code twice as fast as it would have been if any one of us had to do it alone. 

So what are the other benefits?  You generally always learn something when pairing up –   even if you have more experience than the other person.  For me, I learned that you could place a hash (#) in front of the number to specify the ascii value for a character, for example, #9 is a tab character.  This had passed me by for some reason, I mean I knew in HTML you could do stuff like &#33 to obtain an !, but I had just never thought about what it meant.  Now I understand!  You also get the benefits of seeing how someone else thinks, and you can learn a lot from that.  You might also gain “tips” for navigating the environment or valuable tools being used.

There are some downsides too.  When I was doing it the last couple of days I never noticed too many, but I can certainly imagine thinks like different personalities, strong opinions, and reluctance to participate, affecting things quite drastically. Here are a few that I think may annoy the driver, but as I wasn’t driving I don’t really know for sure.

First, as a navigator you sometimes notice tiny things like misspelt names, missed semi-colons, etc, and at the start I pointed these out pretty quickly.  However, I then thought to myself, maybe the person has noticed these things and was going to go back and change them when they finished typing the line.  So I just tried to stop myself interrupting too much – as I suspect someone who constantly points things out can get pretty annoying.  I also had to stop myself preaching my coding habits that don’t make a difference to functionality, that was harder though, as I pretty much have an opinion on just about everything .  As for navigating, I’m sure someone that completely ignored your suggestions and coded away regardless would be extremely annoying.

I’m not sure that pair programming is THE definitive development strategy.  I’m certain that someone sitting over you while you are writing some form of input parser in which you are just running through the motions is almost pointless.  Also, when you have to think really hard about something, whether it be debugging a hard problem or some complex algorithm, someone interjecting all the time would be extremely off-putting.

So to sum up: pair programming definitely has advantages and with some careful planning it can be used to improve a projects quality, cost and time to launch.

Observations, programming good practices, pair programming, programming

Every day you stumble into work and go about your daily routine.   You’re reasonably sure that you’re a model work colleague and everyone likes you.  But this is pretty boring right?  So from this day forward you decide to make other people’s life a misery.  Here are a few handy tips guaranteed to help you with this.

(A short note: in case confusion ensues the tone of this article is meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek! And please let me know of any annoyances that I may have missed in the comments )

1. Constantly receive incoming phone calls: to be honest it doesn’t even have to be constant, just enough to make it appear constant to those sitting around you. I have no real problems with people talking around me or even playing music out loud (as long as it’s not all the time), but the torture of constantly hearing a one-sided conversation is exasperating.  For maximum effect, I suggest you have a really bad ringtone, and make outgoing calls with regular frequency as well. 
2. Take that chicken curry back to your desk so everyone can smell it at lunchtime: I can’t work out whether this is the thing that annoys me most. There is nothing worse than sitting down to do some work and some dude slaps his lunch down on the table 2 feet away. OK, eating certain things at your desk is fine, but there are others that should just be outright banned, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out if you are eating one of those things. Or maybe it does! My suggestion to obtain the maximum effect with this one is to leave it sitting on your desk for a bit to “cool down” prior to eating it.
3. Constantly ask people the same questions (or make the same mistakes): I know this one affects more than just me – I will elaborate. Imagine sitting next to someone who constantly asks you the same questions about how to do something. OK, at first they were new and you answered with glee, but it’s been two years since this person started in the job and they still ask you how to the most simple tasks (like how do you build the software). Not only that but when you tell them they always experience a problem, the same problem, and ask you why it’s not working. This is guaranteed to make people start muttering under your breath at you as soon as their name leaves your mouth. Note: This works best if you don’t say their name too loud at first and just lightly let it drift off your lips. This will give the “pink panther effect” where they will gradually think they are going insane.  Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
4. Find out the names of new buzz technologies, then constantly suggest the inclusion of such things in your app, especially if they are not relevant: remember you don’t need to know what the new technology does or the advantages/disadvantages of it – in fact it’s better that you don’t understand what they are, this heightens the effect. For example, say you want to use AJAX in your legacy desktop COBOL application. To make this even more powerful don’t listen to people when they try to tell you that it’s not relevant, just state “it is” and then bring it up again in the next meeting.
5. If you’re a manager, have favourites: this is just soooo cool to do if you are a manager.  There is literally no better way to piss off those people who are not on your favourites list.  If you want people to really talk about you, this is the one to go for.  For added value, place all those that you don’t really like in a maintenance team, fixing all those pesky bugs that your favourites create.
6. If you’re not a manager, and your manager has a favourites list, try to be on it:  everyone hates a brown nose and this will easily get you straight to number one spot of your colleagues diatribe without a shadow of a doubt.  For this to be especially effective you have to be on that list because you know nothing, but are not going to let that get in the way of your career.  Once you are on it though, try to do things that you know will annoy other people, but your boss will let you away with because you are his favourite, e.g. show up late for stuff.
7. Keep meetings running on longer than they should: if you think a meeting is nearing its conclusion, try and extend it for at least another 30 minutes – you can do so by going over the same points that were discussed in the previous hour of the meeting.
8. If you’re a manager, send programmers on courses they will really really hate: one course that will probably do the trick is communication skills.  Ensure that the course has lots of role playing, and drops the average programmer waaaaaay out their comfort zone. To really rub it in, make them write a report about it when they get back.  Then when they give you the report, make it obvious that you are never going to read it anyway.
9. Make people feel completely uncomfortable if they have to ask you a question: the key to this is to make them feel STUPID.  Some possible tips with this are to sigh loudly when they get to your desk; don’t make eye contact when they speak to you, just keep typing and looking at your screen while talking to them; speak to them as condescendingly as possible, phrases such as “it’s obvious!” and “everyone knows that!”, normally hit the mark; and finally show disdain toward any ideas they come up with.  Also, never finish the conversation by confirming that they have actually understood what you have just said, just sit in silence and see how long it takes for them to realise the conversation is over.  Essentially you are trying to be as unapproachable as possible.
10. Occupy other people’s space: just start to gradually leave pieces of paper and books on the person’s desk next to you.  Don’t limit it to objects though, try to put yourself in their space as well.  Leaving empty mouldy coffee cups, and half eaten food will likely yield a reaction, just don’t let this stop you.

Observations, programming opinion, programming, software development, tips