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While reading this book, Amazon.com: The Expert Beginner eBook: Erik Dietrich: Kindle Store[^] I stumbled upon this...
Quote: Expert Beginner's are developers who do not understand enough of the big picture to understand that they aren't actually experts. What I mean by this is that they have a narrow enough perspective to think that whatever they have been exposed to is the best and only way to do things. Examples include a C# developer who pooh-poohs Java without ever having tried it or a MySQL DBA who dismisses the NoSQL movement as a passing fad.
I've never seen this explained so well before.
I finally know the term (Expert Beginner) to use for the contractor I worked with at a large mortgage bank who knew that he knew everything.
This guy had convinced a publisher to publish his book so he basically threw it on my manager's desk and my manager hired him. It was proof enough that he was a genius.
At one point I asked the contractor a question about his XML parsing code that he had written as part of a larger project.
Me: I see you seem to have written some functionality that manipulates the XML. Why didn't you just use the XML classes built into .NET?
ExpertDev:I tried those classes but they weren't any good so I wrote my own.
Me <slowly>: Umm... First of all, you've now created proprietary code that everyone throughout the company has to examine and understand just to interact with your section of code now. That's one problem.
ExpertDev: Well, I'm telling you the Microsoft libraries are 5 times slower than my code.
Me: So you're telling me that you wrote better code than the .NET team at Microsoft?
ExpertDev: All I can tell you is that mine parses the XML 5 times faster. I have performance data.
Me: Yes, you're right. It is 5 times faster than the .NET XML DOM parser. That's because the .NET one parses it into a structured object that is easy to manipulate. The problem is that in your code your "XML" is actually just a string that you reference via indexes. You see the difference there right?
ExpertDev:I'm telling you, mine's faster.
At this point the discussion was a little heated and a bit loud for the bloodless cubicle environment and my manager came out of his office.
Manager: What're you two yakking about out here? Get back to work!
Me: 
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"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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A long time ago I worked for a guy that had written a book. He knew absolutely nothing. To make matters worse, his hair was thinning and someone had convinced him to, well, paint his scalp black under the hairline to make it look like he had more hair. You can guess how much respect he got. 
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"Convinced him"? As in, he actually did it?
If there ever was a time to roll out the "pics or it didn't happen" meme, this is it...
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"...But the BABES are back!!"
lol. That is one seriously awesome commercial. Thank you.
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R. Giskard Reventlov wrote: paint his scalp black under the hairline to make it look like he had more hair
That's an _interesting_ solution. 
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He was an object of mirth for the few months that he blessed us with his presence.
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You tongues were all probably gone from having to bite them to stifle the laughing every time he walked by. 
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Hair plugs are worse. Trust me.
I had to train a technical bod from our New York distributer - good bloke, spoken to him on the phone loads of times. So he flew over and we meet for the product training ... And he had hair transplants.
All the hair on his head was in little identical clumps, in absolutely straight rows and columns, and while you're talking to him your eyes are continually rising up, and up in fascinated horror to the regular field of - presumably - butt hair all over his head ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Yes. They look like the doll from Toy Story.
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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I worked with a person once who was having to parse XML. Person would scream every time the schema (we used DTDs) changed. Now, I would think screaming is normal because the schema should not change after development started (at least not much). So I kept my head down and ignored it.
Well, this person screamed much worse and never stopped. The person would scream from one day to the next - even until the next schema change happened, at which time the person claimed the code had just started working again due to the previous change. One day this person left the company. A second person who was working with this person was now responsible for the code...
The second person came to me and asked if it was right... I looked at the code and the first person was parsing the entire LARGE XML structure manually as a string. Nothing worked and it was bug ridden. I looked at the 2nd person funny, who never raised the alarm while working with the 1st person. Both had degrees from prestigious universities - but could not ask anyone else in the company how to parse XML. We were using MS products of course, which have built in libraries for doing such things.
That is my XML story...
Lesson 1... be humble and ask for help. Ten minutes of help could have saved weeks of screaming 
Lesson 2... if your employees scream too much... you should code review their work before it is too late 
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Great story.
I guess we find that XML horror stories abound. 
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Much the same way that Jeremy Clarkson's "Sports Train" is faster than a regular train. 
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Jeremy Clarkson's "Sports Train"
Had to look that one up. Great stuff.
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raddevus wrote: The problem is that in your code your "XML" is actually just a string that you reference via indexes.
I'm sure, that one who sees XML as a string will fall over escaped chars in an entity... Take some time to create the proper data and you will see miracles... 
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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So you have an issue with programming methodolgies that can affect the product, timelines, people's sanity and probably profitability and instead of sitting down to dig into the issue he tells you to get back to work?
The problem isn't ExpertDev. The problem is the manager.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: The problem is the manager.
Nailed it!!
Very astute of you. You noticed the subtext of the story. I actually told the manager that it was crazy because of all the reasons you mentioned and he said,
Quote: "[Contractor] is smart enough that I'm sure he is doing the right thing."
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raddevus wrote: "[Contractor] is smart enough that I'm sure he is doing the right thing."
In Manager speak - "I'ts costing me a fortune for this guy, don't tell me he's no good'
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The manager was also saying:
"Look, it doesn't really matter, because by the time anyone finds out that it's not great code it won't matter because then those people will just have to deal with it anyways. But, if you make noise, upper level management will think something is wrong in my group and then they might start looking more closely at me and my life is good right now. And that's what matters...my life being easy."
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Manager- thing with no skills and a belief system that replaces reality.
Leadership equals wrecked ship.
If you think you are leading my look behind you. You are alone.
If you think I am leading you, You are lost.
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raddevus wrote: a C# developer who pooh-poohs Java without ever having tried it
When the C# developer has tried Java he will still pooh-pooh it though 
Erik's blog on the expert beginner was in The Insider a while back.
The problem is that the more you know the better you know what you don't know.
That's why the good people are modest, while the people who know just a little bit shout the hardest.
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Sander Rossel wrote: The problem is that the more you know the better you know what you don't know.That's why the good people are modest, while the people who know just a little bit shout the hardest.
Two great truths.
Too bad the whole world doesn't know them better.
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