[atacrawl]

Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway.

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied.

Edit: Don't take that to mean "shitty code is okay," it's just that you don't have to set the bar as high as you think when it comes to feeling like you're good enough to charge what you want to charge for the work.

[mbrock]

I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!

[lifeisstillgood]

Because software is like writing. It is a creative process.

When we want life or death critical software, like life or death critical writing, we take a lot more care, as in making laws, writing treaties and contracts.

But we can never make it prescriptive.

[TamDenholm]

Theres not really any standard qualifications for us, plus, if an electrician or plumber screws up, its much more serious than if we do.

[mbrock]

That's an unwarranted generalization.

Say you work on an online calendar app. Might not feel so critical. But when a bug loses someone's appointment, who knows how serious that is? You probably don't really know in just what ways people are relying on your product's quality.

I work in the field of electronic medical data. If some banal UI flaw causes a certain icon to scroll out of view, a doctor might miss your medication allergy. If two columns of a certain table are too close to each other, your lab result might be grossly misinterpreted.

Whatever you work with, the only ethical position seems to be: be careful, and do things properly. Of course, with skill and experience comes an understanding of what corners can be cut.

[astine]

I think that depends a little on what you're writing:

"Oh no! The flight system on this rocket ship is going haywire!"

"Ok, ok, but at least it's not the plumbing!"

[mattbrewsbytes]

Building a flight system for a rocket ship is probably not something you're going to find as a job on elance or craigslist.

[6d0debc071]

IME a lot of low level jobs, especially where the company is offering to train people themselves, without any sort of regulatory oversight and where results are difficult to measure, have that sort of culture. If your rep's not that important to you....

[wikwocket]

Judging by the state of the electrical wiring and plumbing in the houses I have lived in, this is absolutely the case...

Sadly when their 'code' has had 'buffer overflows,' I have needed to fix water damage or put out a small fire!

[mark212]

there's also the building code and inspectors, at least here in the US. A complete PITA when doing remodeling, but this system truly does save lives.

[pnathan]

Not sure about online, but yeah, this sentiment is not unique to softwre people.

[casual_slacker]

"Bad code" is something that a lot of people worry about. Honestly though, it's all made up and it doesn't matter. The vast majority of "bad code" that I've worked with was written by good programmers, but the requirements changed so much over time that the core models no longer represent the domain. Even bad code written by interns is usually just in need of a bit of refactoring before it becomes good code.

Just wanted to throw that out there. At the end of the day, "good" or "bad" is less relevant than whether it passes QA, and how maintainable something is depends on what "maintenance" means to your project.