I think it's the contract jobs that produce bad code. My company produces commercial software mostly written in Perl. It's been under development for 15 years and the code base is quite readable and easy to understand. That's because the programmers are not contract programmers and they have sufficiently good taste and motivation to avoid the worst of Perl's cuteness. You can write readable, maintainable Perl. It just takes a lot of work.

Of course, that applies to any other programming language as well.

You completely missed my point. You have to be passionate about your craft. I didn't say you have to be passionate about a particular employer.

I started a software company back in 1999; we're still around and up to 10 employees, so I have had some moderate success in the software business.

I think the LifeHacker link makes a lot of good points. I especially agree with limiting overtime. I *never* ask my developers to work overtime. Just never. Because I don't set release dates. When someone asks when the next release will be, I say "when it's ready" and I mean it. It's far more important to get it right than to get it out "on time", whatever that is.

I would add that to be a great software developer, you need a lot of discipline. You need to write your unit and regression tests even if you don't feel like it and even if you'd rather be moving on to the next cool feature. You need to write your documentation clearly and comprehensively. You need to have your code reviewed; even the best programmer can benefit from suggestions that improve code clarity.

You need to listen to your customers. You can write the greatest software in the world, but if it doesn't do what your clients want, that's not much use. But you also need to have enough judgement to know when your customers are asking for something ridiculous and you need to have the communication skills necessary to explain to them why what they think they want isn't what they really want.

You also have to be passionate. If you went into computer science because you thought you'd get a secure job, but never particularly liked computers and didn't do programming on your own time, forget it... you won't be a great software developer.

Wait... you can tell the difference between American and Canadian?

SkyMaul has more interesting stuff, and only slightly more ridiculous.

... all that's needed is for Eskom (the South African electrical utility) to actually supply reliable power to recharge all those tablets!

OMG, lame lame lame. Typical Islamist conspiracy theory. Of course, if you're just an idiotic Western leftist, then I apologize for calling you an Islamist. The correct term should have been whore for the Islamists.

I'm not the only one to call Islam fascist. It was called fascist by the ex-Muslim son of an Imam.

Most Muslims are very nice people. You didn't read what I wrote. Islam is intrinsically evil. Most Muslims are not evil because their intrinsic human nature leads them to reject the evil aspects of Islam. Unfortunately, it's dangerous to verbalize this because apostasy in Islam is punishable by death. So most Muslims quietly reject the worst aspects of Islam without actually admitting to doing that.

You say you find my generalization offensive? How offensive do you find the cold-blooded murder of 12 people just because they dared to exercise their democratic right to free expression?

If a country is under threat, an armed response may be appropriate. I know some people don't like that fact, but it's a fact.

As long as France wants to remain a democratic country, it may sometimes need to resort to extra armed security on the streets.

? How do you leap to that conclusion?

+1. Islam is petrified of people who think, because thinking people will see it for the racist, facist, evil, misogynistic, hateful, backward pile of war-mongering nastiness that it truly is.

Anyone who doubts the depths of depravity encouraged by Islam should read Cruel and Usual Punishment, written by a former Muslim who suffered at the hands of Islam.

This is the response of the fascist ideology known as Islam to freedom of expression.

Religion is very easy to reach and abuse.

Flip it around - there are billions of religious people who don't kill anyone

How many of them don't kill because they just think it's wrong? And how many say "Wow, I sure would have liked to have killed someone except my religion says it's wrong." Only in the latter case does religion deserve any credit.

But the desire to kill comes from within

Yes. But it takes an organizing philosophy to rally others around you to commit atrocities. Religion is very, very good for that. As such, religion is highly dangerous. It's like ordnance left lying around, just waiting for the right terrorist to come along and use it.