Ok, your code examples are beyond wrong-headed. They're just frickin' wrong, and illustrate a very poor grasp of abstraction. What you're essentially saying is that security concerns cannot be abstracted.

They can.

Your DeletePicture(int pictureId) example could be a method of a class (let's call it PictureManager) that depends on an ISecurityContext implementation (or an IPictureDataProvider whose concrete class depends on an ISecurityContext, or any other runtime configuration that happens to be appropriate). The nice bit about that is you can abstract the security portion away, and test your class in isolation. Your example actually is indicative of one of the sources of many bugs: coupling. You're coupling the responsibility of every piece of code to security. What if someone then comes along and says, "We now have a priority to gather analytics on our API. This is just as high a priority and just as critical as security." Your way means modifying the method signatures of every method in the system. That's bad design. Go back to school, kid. You've got a lot to learn.

I find that password-protected zip files work marvelously well on portable media.

This is probably the most politically-incorrect thing to say, but have no mercy for people who fail to communicate clearly, both written and verbal, in English. This causes SO MANY problems. If they can't communicate clearly, you can't trust them in front of customers, you can't trust them to do what you ask, and you will constantly struggle with miscommunication. And, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, tell them why you didn't choose them.

A no-broadcast policy breaks Wake-on-LAN.

I think this guy is asking to be whacked in the noggin with a smooth stick, probably for attempting to be funny using an extremely worn-out joke.

[...]hair brained library written in a language that uses tabs for scoping.

Making comments like this clearly reveal that your 30 years' experience in programming hasn't taught you to appreciate the benefits and drawbacks in any given programming language. I suppose you're probably more liberal with venting your opinions on /. than you would be with your CEOs and CFOs, but still, this ingnorant drivel deflates your argument. I've encountered lots of programmers who've seen it all and been there done that and appear to have a similar attitude to yours about young people. I recommend you should spend some time doing some code maintenance, bug fixing, or even some unit testing in an open-source Python project before you write it off.

That being said, I totally agree about ethics in our craft. I find that the quick fix is far to often applied. Then, when someone mentions that something needs to be revisited in the next release, the managers cover their ears and say "la la la, can't hear you, it's already in the field working right, that means it's perfect!" While it's true that few of us are building software systems for the space shuttle, that doesn't justify building code that behaves like a Rube Goldberg machine.

I live in a neighborhood with a neighborhood covenant that restricts, for one, dishes and antennas that extend beyond the roof of the house or sit on the front of the house. While this may cause some inconvenience, the same neighborhood covenant also prevents someone from leaving a broken-down vehicle up on cinder blocks in his front yard for an indeterminate amount of time. Ultimately, it protects the value of my house and my neighborhood by making sure I don't live near unsightly things that will lower my property value. Neighborhood covenants aren't for everyone, but they do help mitigate risk of property value depreciation if such mitigation is more valuable to you than the "right" to keep the externally-visible parts of your home & yard looking trashy.