Lazy Bastard

LeoScott insists that the best programmers are lazy programmers. I think he is right, because an ambitious programmer untempered by DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork and YouArentGonnaNeedIt will write too much code, causing as much harm as good.

Paradoxically, you may find a lazy programmer working very hard. This happens whenever working hard now will avoid more hard work in the future. --WayneConrad

Sorry, but I think this is bogus. Lazy programmers are bad programmers. Lazy programmers cut corners, don't bother to keep up in their field, and duck responsibility. However, efficient programmers--people on top of their craft, their project, and their environment--may appear to be kicking back more than their less efficient brethren. This isn't laziness--it's control. --DavidThomas

The word lazy has so many 'negative waves' attached to it that it is hard the see through to the positive. I think this shares some of the problems people have with the label JustaProgrammer. I would never call myself efficient and yet I would lay claim to the attributes that DavidThomas listed. I would call myself lazy in that I am constantly looking for a solution that is simpler than anyone thought possible while making the customer happy and making my life easier. I am always on the lookout for something to leave out, something that makes it so that poeple change their minds or add new features and nothing in my code changes. I think lazy fits much better than efficient. --LeoScott

Yeah, yeah ... Laziness is the mother of invention and all that. But, I was just thinking that the word Bastard has so many 'negative waves' attached to it that it is hard the see through to the positive. --EricHerman (See PissTake for an explanation of the meaning of "bastard" in this context.)

Maybe the Australian use of the term Bastard is more appropriate here. Think more down the Blighter end of the scale rather than the Complete Twat end.

Just followed David's links to PragmaticProgrammer. This sounds like a book I need to read.

There is a real LazyProgrammer page. Maybe this stuff should go there?

So who's going to volunteer to move it? -- AsimJalis

See LazinessImpatienceHubris for the three great virtues of a programmer. (The effects of parental marital status were not considered.)

Yes. Larry Wall's kind of laziness is what I had in mind --LeoScott