I've tried to only date TECO women. I remember a real high maintenance type a friend was dating being really offended by that philosophy.

The companion article "Real programmers don't each quiche" gave me this rule to live by: "Mountain climbing is OK, though, and real programmers often wear climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room." Which I've used on many a manger enquiring why I was wearing hiking boots rather than dress shoes to great success. Though I admit to brown bagging it now.

This person would cry if they knew that when I went to school, Introductory Programming for people who weren't computer science majors was Pascal. Now I think it's C++... is that bad also?

Yeah, I knew a little Pascal, and when I went online via a Unix box I found out how much it was despised as merely a "learning" lnaguage. Bah.

I'd be surprised if C or C++ is still taught to anyone at an introductory level, even freshman compsci or EE students. Java is apparently the hot shit now for whatever stupid reason, or maybe C# if it's one of those schools that gets massive discounts from Microsoft in exchange for poisoning the well early. I don't really understand why anyone would teach using a language that abstracts how the computer fucking works away from people who are hoping to make a living out of making computers work but I guess that's the state of modern education for you.

god almighty, this is hideous

and of course it's articles like this that allow bad programmers to hide behind obfuscation, bad documentation and over-complexity in the belief that code that can't be read is better than code that can. take yourself to thedailywtf.com for countless examples of that.

on a vaguely related note i really dislike "the bastard operator from hell" for similar reasons. the amount of shitty support guys I've met with bad attitudes and poor skills who see the bofh as something to aspire to. oy.

I think few support guys , shitty or otherwise, aspire to emulate the BOFH. It's more of a vicarious relief.