Eight different types of programmers

Shot from the movie Kingsman

We are sure that in this article you will accurately recognize your employees, and possibly yourself. Swedish entrepreneur and developer David Elbe described eight types of programmers with whom he had to deal in the last 10 years of work in web development projects. Which types are best combined into a team and what code to expect from them - read in translation from Alconost .

1. Agent 007

Shot from the cartoon "Penguins of Madagascar"
Quickly delves into your problems and solves them. Not very concerned about the quality of the code. It would not occur to him to correct indents in someone else’s code. If necessary, "take advantage of scotch."
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From time to time can write really good code. Happy when other people refactor its code, after which it still works well.

If such an employee leaves, it will be difficult to correct problems in the entire application. Always produces results faster than expected. Customers and managers are crazy about him.

It works badly with the Perfectionist .

2. Mr. 90%

Brings a solution to the problem almost to the end, but always misses something, without which the entire component is useless or unstable. He is more concerned with the code itself, and not how the final product will work.

At first, his progress is impressive, as he performs a large number of planned cases, but later comes disappointment when allegedly solved problems have to be solved again.

Does not get on with testers, but perfectly keeps deadlines. Combine such a programmer in one team with Agent 007 . It will be a good team.

3. Amateur rewrite code

Never leave intact a single code snippet, if it believes that you can refactor this code. It may spend more time refactoring an insignificant part of the code base than on solving a real problem.

Its code has the best test results in history, but is always in a state of processing.

If you give such a programmer an existing project in PHP and MySQL, he will begin to rewrite it on Go and a database that does not support SQL. And only then will he ask what problem it was necessary to solve.

4. Perfectionist

Looks like a Lover to rewrite code , but unlike him seeks to make his own code perfect. It can spend whole days on tasks that Agent 007 solves in a couple of minutes, but at the same time the ready code will be flawless.

Its really annoying someone else's code. You hardly want such a person to check the results of your work.

A perfectionist can never correctly estimate the time needed for a project, since perfection has no time frame.

5. Coder copypaster

He got his job a long time ago, but he has no idea what he is doing. Every day he thanks the higher forces for backups and version control systems, because when he tries to do something, it’s very likely that something will break.

He likes to solve problems in working environments, as his local copy for development never works. Spends half a day on the Stack Overflow website.

6. The experimenter

He constantly tries new editors, frameworks, build tools, programming languages ​​and keyboards. He is really eager to use some of the latest "shiny little things" in your next project. It can spend a week setting up the application, only to improve on the next day.

Nobody knows anything about the quality of his code, because he doesn’t create anything, but he is constantly experimenting with new ones.

Well works with a fan to rewrite the code .

7. Spaghetti Coder

Constantly "cuts corners" to keep deadlines. Probably one of the most productive employees, as it constantly implements new components. After such a programmer, there is an undocumented, untested code that even the author himself cannot figure out in a month.

In the long run, it can bring more problems than good, but it is very good at keeping deadlines and quickly creating components. Can load all your secret API keys into your open source project on Github, because this is the quickest and easiest solution.

It gets along badly with the Perfectionist , creates a lot of work for the Lover to rewrite the code .

8. Pseudocoder

A manager who thinks he can better explain something to employees by writing pseudocode.

if price of beer is less than 10 then do order drink else exit foobar 

In fact, it looks like he is talking to a child: “Oh, what a cutie! Bring that red ball to mommy! Good girl, good programmer! ”

Well, how did you recognize yourself in one of the types?


About the translator

The article is translated in Alconost.

Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.

We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.

Read more: https://alconost.com