Embedded Systems Engineer Remembers Younger Coder

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161 views9/21/2018
An experienced embedded systems engineer remembers a time interacting with a less experienced programmer

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00:00 - 00:05So I was working on this project with some n00b programmer
00:05 - 00:07And I'm like, "C'mon let's get this build out the door"
00:07 - 00:10It's 10 at night and we all want to go home
00:11 - 00:16And he came to me with this runtime compilation problem
00:17 - 00:21He's trying to use dynamic_cast on an object
00:21 - 00:24With no RTTI
00:29 - 00:31No RTTI
00:31 - 00:34How the hell is the compiler supposed to know what to do with that...
00:38 - 00:40...with no RTTI
00:41 - 00:47This kid has no idea what I'm talking about when I tell him, "You need to enable RTTI"
00:47 - 00:50And he says, "How do I do that?"
00:50 - 00:56And I'm like, "This is an embedded system on a game console, RTTI is useless to us"
00:58 - 00:59So he says, "What should I do then?"
00:59 - 01:01"What should I do?"
01:04 - 01:06"Get your n00b ass outta here!" Is what I should tell him
01:06 - 01:08"Go write some batch scripts in the corner over there"
01:13 - 01:14No RTTI
01:14 - 01:16I can't believe this kid
01:16 - 01:20Right out of college
01:21 - 01:27And he thinks we can just dynamic_cast all day
01:35 - 01:36What's next? Enable exceptions?!?!
01:36 - 01:39"Oh yeah every function call we need to wrap in try{}catch(){}"
01:41 - 01:44No, but really we uh
01:44 - 01:47had to let him go
01:47 - 01:49I see him in line at the homeless shelter
01:50 - 01:53His life is a mess now but...
01:54 - 01:56...we all had a good laugh...
01:56 - 01:58...looking at his code after he left
01:58 - 02:02His use of our coding standard, out the window
02:05 - 02:07Tabs and spaces everywhere
02:10 - 02:11Miles of trailing whitespace
02:11 - 02:13Multiple semicolons used for member declarations
02:15 - 02:17We counted 5 on one line once
02:17 - 02:20It was like, "int x;;;;;"
02:21 - 02:28His code brings me smiles every time I look at it. Whenever I have a rough day I open up "francis_code_shit.cpp"
02:29 - 02:30His name was Francis?
02:30 - 02:32Yeah that's his name
02:36 - 02:39Every time I look I find something new
02:40 - 02:42Such a n00b
02:50 - 02:55I wonder where he is now
02:56 - 02:58Maybe he turned his life around?
02:58 - 03:04It was so long ago, I don't think programming was for him
03:04 - 03:09He got hooked on drugs...I shouldn't laugh...but really, who uses RTTI
03:09 - 03:11He might be dead...
03:16 - 03:20...so he's no longer around to write shitty code
03:23 - 03:26It took us 3 months to undo his crap
03:31 - 03:36And I got a raise...my boss said, "Nice work. You made the right call on that kid"