My Response to Jeff Atwood, his Programmer’s Bill of Rights
Back in August 2006 Jeff Atwood wrote “The Programmer’s Bill of Rights.” His recent appearance on Carl Franklin’s .NET Rocks! moves me to respond to his list of programmer’s “rights.” Now let’s walk the array:
- *Every programmer shall have two monitors. *Sounds great but not my reality—not exactly. To me, my use of a portable computer is kind of like a second monitor—especially when developing network-aware applications. My server and development environment is on my portable—on one monitor—and the server output to the client is shown on my desktop machine—on another monitor. By no means would true dual monitors be refused by me but the flexibility of portability is also important.
- Every programmer shall have a fast PC*.* Yes. My portable is slinging impressive dual-core cycles with 2 gigs of RAM.
- Every programmer shall have their choice of mouse and keyboard*.* Yes insofar as my input tools for my portable are chosen by me.
- Every programmer shall have a comfortable chair*.* Yes. Yes. Yes. My chair is fine but not worth any distinguishing praise.
- Every programmer shall have a fast internet connection*.* Yes. Who would want a slow connection?
- Every programmer shall have quiet working conditions*.* Hell, yes! We should never share space with “operations people” or “network people”—these people live in a completely different world that requires a lot of shouting to each other over large distances.Jeff Atwood’s “Coding Horror” reminds me of Net Slaves from years past. Back when Net Slaves was the darling of the buzz circuit they ran an excerpt of my Internet classic, “An IT Fundamentalist Speaks.”