> If laypeople can assemble projects on GitHub and invite similarly unskilled friends to participate, who’s being hurt?
The users who assume the authors are competent and aren't making stupid/dangerous security mistakes. I think for a while you could rely on the assumption that people who released software knew what they were doing... and that if they didn't, they'd at least have the sense to keep their half-arsed experiments to themselves.
They don't care. Words are just a means to an end, a compliance tool that doesn't have to make any sense as long as it works on enough people, and enough people are willing to pat them on the head for repeating them. You're not talking to people who deal in principles, which is also why they're eerily unmoved by even the most glaring double-standards.
Some of them could be badly designed. Mine has a part that hooks over the top of the door-frame, along with a bar that sits against the door frame on the other side... so the more weight you have on it, the more solidly it sits. I like that my body weight isn't hanging from a little screw in the door frame (which I suspect is a failure point).
From what I've seen in those videos, most of the time people are screwing around, swinging out of them and trying to do tricks... if you're doing proper form when the bar breaks, you should probably be landing on your feet anyway?
"Well written" is hard to demonstrate, because (aside from being somewhat subjective) it's something that might only play itself out over a long period. For example, can you take one feature and completely remove it, without creating a nightmare for yourself? Can you add a new feature without needing to re-write and rearrange a million other things? And then on the opposite end of the spectrum, is everything so de-coupled that it adds needless structural complexity?
I think my biggest lesson as a programmer was returning to large projects I hadn't touched in a few months, needing to implement big changes. Nothing else has developed my sense of where, when, and how to separate concerns.
I'd recommend toying around with "design patterns", which forces you to think about different approaches. But I might be answering this at a different scale than you're asking. Personally I've found my biggest challenges have been structural... rather than coming up with tight little algorithms for things.
> I don't know why there's such a taboo over saying some people are more intelligent than others.
Makes it easier to seed resentment and division. There's a notable cohort of ideologically-possessed individuals whose mission in life seems to be flatly denying the existence of meritocracy. If everyone is as smart as the smartest people in the world (and we'll repeat this until it's accepted as true), then some injustice logically must be taking place. Our ideology just so happens to have a solution to address this, so you should give us power. It's a pattern that's been playing out for a while now.
> They kept me in a 10x10 cubicle with a white board and small table for 6+ hours during which a parade of engineers came through to ask me puzzle questions.
Do you ever wonder whether it was all some kind of psychological experiment? That there really was no job. And the test was to see how long you'd sit there doing puzzles?
> None of the interviewers could answer simple questions like "What do you do?" or "What am I going to do?"
Only the control group was given that information. :P
You know, I never tried, because I've never considered it a problem. I have 3 cups a day. I also know what it feels like to be too wired on coffee to sleep, so I feel like I know when that's not happening. But I've been drinking coffee for so many years uninterrupted... I do have to wonder if I even know what "normal" is.
Well I don't know if I can say I'm making it work. I do end up in some crazy situations, like during winter not seeing daylight for a few weeks. I still think of it as being in "Well, that can't be good" territory. Then there's the horror of thinking - "If my work situation falls apart and I have to get a 9-to-5, how will I even deal with that?".
I sometimes wonder if it'd just sort itself out if I quit caffeine completely, and stopped staring at a screen all day... but that's not exactly compatible with my career.
The users who assume the authors are competent and aren't making stupid/dangerous security mistakes. I think for a while you could rely on the assumption that people who released software knew what they were doing... and that if they didn't, they'd at least have the sense to keep their half-arsed experiments to themselves.