[smsm42]

Good that folks on FreeBSD have proper controls that stopped the problem before it was released, and shame on Ars Technica for bringing completely irrelevant 10+ year old eviction dispute into an article about technical issues as if it were relevant. This bullshit needs to stop. I mean I get that the guy may have some issues, and burnout is a very real thing, and if the code is low quality then it needs to be addressed, but it shouldn't be "oh and also his code is bad because of 10-year old story that has nothing to do with the code in question". We really can do without this stuff, and if they just dropped that whole section, the article would be much improved.

[becausepc]

Calling the story "eviction dispute" is quite an understatement. They served 4 years jail sentence for sawing huge hole through tenants' living room and forging threatening letters as if they were coming from tenants.

The story is relevant, because:

1. It was already out there in the public. Skipping it completely would be unprofessional.

2. It gives a possible explanation for low code quality.

3. The developer in question is open about his past.

4. Person who went so far as resort to destruction and deceit in the physical world, could easily cut corner in the code review process:

https://reviews.freebsd.org/D26137

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26596108

[smsm42]

Most important part first:

> Person who went so far as resort to destruction and deceit in the physical world, could easily cut corner in the code review process:

This is a very dangerous delusion. It implies that producing flawed code requires some kind of moral blemish, a flawed character, a bad person. Truly upstanding citizen and high moral character would never submit a buggy code, but one can't expect otherwise from a criminal.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In my decades-long experience reviewing what must be by now megabytes of code, the code quality has absolutely no relationship to the moral character. Best people can produce - and regularly do produce - very flawed code (very much including myself, of course), and even excellent coders can be busy, tired, have temporary slip of attention, be wrong about particular API or language construct, mistaken, suffer from a burnout or a work-life issue... Even at their best, people produce flawed code all the time - that's why we have code reviews in the first place! It's not to weed out "that kind of people" who try to sneak into our pristine cohorts - it's because producing good code is hard, and producing flawless code all the time is nigh impossible to do by a single person. A concerted effort of multiple smart people over time is required to achieve even imperfect, but acceptable quality - and perfection is still an unattainable goal. It's a hard work, and it can't be done alone - nothing to do with character flaws.

And yes, left to their own devices, even the best people are subject to cognitive biases and fallacies - that's why it's impossible to effectively review one's own code and you need peer review. Not because you're suspected in being a criminal or at least a sloppy coder - but because you're human and as such, your best effort will never be perfect, especially not at scales modern code is produced.

> It was already out there in the public. Skipping it completely would be unprofessional.

Nonsense. Nobody expects every article about a person to include their complete biography. People expect including relevant stuff and throwing out irrelevant one. What is unprofessional is brining in irrelevant details to smear the character of a person to prejudice the reader against him from the start (that's why this BS goes first and the substantial part goes later). Instead of trusting the reader to judge on substance, the hack first creates an emotional prejudice which would cloud the mind of the reader and make a pre-formed opinion before the substantial part ever begun.