Re: Appreciating developers

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Paul Stevens writes ("Re: Appreciating developers"):
> Alas, basic communicative skills and elementary knowledge of
> motivational psychology are simply not part of some people's mental
> toolkit. 
> 
> They are however required necessities when building a community-like
> environment such as Debian.

I agree.

> To me, there is sadly little surprising about tech-heads who think
> anyone without knowledge of O_EXCL to be a total dweep.

If Debian stops being a distribution built by tech-heads then it will
cease to be worthwhile.

Anyone who doesn't know about O_EXCL (and the dozen or so other common
mistakes) should not be writing code until they've learned.  I'm
sorry, but you can't remove requirements for technical competence and
knowledge from this technical job.

One Of These Days I shall write a `common programming mistakes'
document.

Ian.