I disagree with the article.
Writing good documentation is hard. It's not just a case of explaining the how or why of a given piece of code, it's knowing how much or little detail is just right to get the point across and doing so in a way that's understandable to a wide range of technical abilities. I think it's quite possible for some programmers to excel at coding and yet not be the best person for writing documentation.
Quote:
|
Those languages are great for getting stuff done (in appropriate application areas), but they leave huge gaps in understanding about how computers actually work
|
At the risk of going off on a tangent, I think this is an important point. Having a clear understanding of how a computer is going to end up handling your code can help you appreciate and anticipate a large number of issues. It can also give you an intuition for when something doesn't quite feel right. You may not be able to put your finger on what it is, but it's often enough to make you start googling a subject.
One of the few good changes proposed in UK education is the scrapping of current IT courses and a move to a more industry supported syllabus with a greater focus on programming (most IT courses currently include zero programming and are totally word/excel/business process oriented). It's shocking that we expect students to start a course at college and university levels with little or no actual coding experience. Imagine taking A-level or degree maths/english without having previously been taught to add up or read/write.
Computers are so important in our lives now that there needs to be an attempt to teach the basics of how they work at a hardware level and a limited amount of programming to solidify those concepts.
Going back to the original article, I think it's just a case of, some programmers are just simply poor programmers. Perhaps they're lazy or take little professional pride in their work? Perhaps it's any number of other reasons. However, good programmers who do take pride in their work will often take pride in their other pursuits and be good at those too. Sometimes that may happen to mean they're good with language or maths, but equally they could be atrocious spellers and have poor grammar, but excel in other areas.