Why Good Programmers are Lazy and Dumb (2005)

The idea that being a &quot;dumb&quot; programmer helps with debugging reminds me of a tactic I see people use on StackOverflow. Some programmer will post a problem they&#x27;re having, and lots of ultimately unhelpful solutions will be suggested until someone else asks &quot;what are you trying to accomplish?&quot; and then it&#x27;s suddenly made clear that the programmer&#x27;s problem was being approached in the wrong way.<p>I&#x27;ve seen this happen so many times on SO, with good results, that it&#x27;s become the way I want to think about other problems in life.

In that regard, see the three classic virtues of a programmer - laziness, impatience and hubris. <a href="http://www.cranked.me/2008/07/laziness-impatience-hubris-three-great.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cranked.me&#x2F;2008&#x2F;07&#x2F;laziness-impatience-hubris-thr...</a>

Efficient != lazy Inquisitive != dumb<p>I agree with the overall gist of the article, but the title is obvious link-bait and his valid points have been twisted just to fit it.

&quot;a good programmer must be dumb. Why? Because if he’s smart, and he knows he is smart, he will:<p>a) stop learning b) stop being critical towards his own work&quot;<p>No. Just, no.

So being smart equates to not being able to put oneself into question ? Not the way I&#x27;m used to think about intelligence. Though, programming cultivates the habit of rethinking your premises, I think we can all testify.

- A paradoxical claim of &quot;bad is good&quot; in the title. Off to a good start.<p>- The content is some neverheard&#x27;s blog post with no substance to back up the claim. Getting there.<p>- Analogies, personal stories, vaguely &quot;motivational&quot; Powerpoint lingo, rambling, self-contradictions... Bingo!<p>Yes, I&#x27;m sure this will be quite successful on the HN front page.