What's constructive about being lazy and incompetent?

Question

So we have a question that's pretty popular today: Are programmers getting lazier and less competent

Which, to me personally, reads very much like a rant and the answers its received have mainly been to challenge the assertions in the question itself.

Normally, it's a question that would be closed as not constructive, but it's got a lot of activity and no close votes.

So is this question constructive? If so, why? If it isn't, what can we do to get the community more animated in helping moderate popular questions that are ultimately poor fits for our site?

Answer 1

Read this: How to be Lazy, Dumb, and Successful. This is the only example I remember, I've seen similar articles in the past numerous times. So this is a very interesting post, and I'm not surprised it's so popular.

I think we should try to understand something that seems ridiculous to us can be brilliant to another. This is enforced by the fact our community is global and the cultural factor is strong.

Your job as a moderator is becoming very difficult in a community where subjectivity is authorized.

Answer 2

Are programmers getting lazier and less competent

I've seen this question asked for as long as I've been a programmer. Usually in forums or chat, and often by programmers who really haven't been doing it long enough to have any perspective, or whose experience is so narrow that they're threatened by change. I suspect I asked it myself at some point...

It's always popular. And the answer is always "yes". Kids these days are always lazy and unruly.

So if this is nothing more than a rehashing of a classic rant, it's not constructive. If, by some miracle, it happens to collect a few lengthy answers full of experiences, facts, and references, then it could be considered constructive, something for us to keep in our back pockets for the next time this argument comes up elsewhere.

Answer 3

As one who answered the question, and has been inclined to vote to close non-constructive questions in the past - I thought it was very valid.

I started coding before the internet was prevalent, when there was very little thought of collaboration and people would code everything from scratch every time (unless the company had a library for that particular task). RAD languages such as VB were just beginning to gain traction and, when I learned of them, I remember going through a phase of thinking "well that's just lazy, it's not real programming."

I wish I'd had someone to explain to me why that's a logical fallacy.

On the basis that we should really be focusing on the question: Does this question and its answers make the internet a better place? I decided it was worth a good answer rather than a vote to close.

As a side note, I also think that the more positive subject and the user's own edit have done more harm than good. Now the top-voted answers don't really make any sense.

Answer 4

I edited the title to assist.

Perhaps there is a kernel of a decent -- not great, but decent -- question in there somewhere. There certainly have been close votes cast before, so maybe something about this seems constructive...ish.

Answer 5

People have been complaining about the decline in youth today since Plato penned Phaedrus some 2500 years ago. I'm certain that he heard the same lament from old farts when he was a youngster as well.

In the case of Phaedrus, his main complaint was that with youngsters using that new fangled invention (called writing), they aren't using their brains to memorize stuff like we did back in the olden days, when it was 15 miles to school, and it was uphill both ways.

When I was a young sprout learning programming, I overheard a similar lament uttered by some greybeards, who claimed that the new fangled computer terminals were going to make every new programmer lazier because they can just hit the backspace if they make a mistake. Having to throw out a punch card and type it all over again was somehow something that was going to build moral character.