According to you Jeff, 80% of developers are people that don't care much about improving the quality of their craft. In other words, it's mostly those who just care about the paycheck...programming is a job that pays the bills.
The remaining 20% fall in the category of those that read your blog (note the part in Italics):
But here's the paradox: the types of programmers who would most benefit from these guidelines, rules, principles, and checklists are the least likely to read and follow them. Throwing a book of rules at a terrible programmer just creates a terrible programmer with a bruise on their head where the book bounced off. This is something I discussed previously in Mort, Elvis, Einstein, and You:
Thus, if you read the article, you are most assuredly in the twenty percent category. The other eighty percent are not actively thinking about the craft of software development. They would never find that piece, much less read it. They simply don't read programming blogs-- other than as the result of web searches to find quick-fix answers to a specific problem they're having. Nor have they read any of the books in my recommended reading list. The defining characteristic of the vast majority of these so-called "vocational" programmers is that they are unreachable. It doesn't matter what you, I or anyone else writes here -- they'll never see it.In the absence of mentoring and apprenticeship, the dissemination of better programming practices is often conveniently packaged into processes and methodologies. How many of these do you know? How many have you practiced?
Yet at the same time, as author of this blog and thus falling in the 20%, you state:
All those incredibly detailed rules, guidelines, methodologies, and principles? YAGNI. If it can't be explained on a single double-spaced sheet of paper, it's a waste of your time. Go read and write some code!
So which is it Jeff? Do we or don't we try and improve ourselves?
I don't fall into either of the groups, I'm not a Coding Horror. I'm one of those guys that tries to improve my knowledge, I try and learn continuously, either by myself or with the help of those that surround me. I don't just throw it all out of the window and claim that if there isn't a mentor around to help me, screw it. I don't give up if I can't understand it in a few hours. If others do differently, I try and understand why they do it differently.
To claim that I'm not going to need to, or not change my ways is very arrogant on my behalf. And the best thing is that I'm not alone. There are thousands of others like me.
So please Jeff, don't corrupt the profession just to justify your own ways.
[And to my reader (Hi Mom!), I will do my utmost best to refrain from writing any more posts about Coding Horror]