To all those graduating with their CS degrees this summer, here is the final lesson. This is the stuff they never tell you when you’re learning to code. But after you get that job in the real world, you’ll discover that everybody who programs for a living subscribes to one of these programming philosophies. Better get to know them now, because the percentage of each on your team may shape your work environment!

Be A Lazy Bastard Most popular with everyone born after 1980. Summed up as: Refuse to learn, instead deposit yourself in the lap of everyone you see and demand that they do all of your thinking for you. Typified by posting in forums asking, “What’s the easiest (language to learn, way to learn, platform to build on)?” These people are worthless wastes of protein fit only to be shot and butchered for food, but who we’d really like to have a word with are the gullible cows who “help” them. DON’T DO THAT! They exist to waste your time; they don’t even read the answer, they just lurk for a week and post the same question again.

The One True Code Path Of Enlightenment Basically whenever you have some hot hyped-up buzzword that comes along right when these people got out of college, they were the first ones in line for the KoolAde. Be it Object-Oriented Programming, REST, Web 2.0, X-Treme Programming, Java, or whatever current cult is hot, they’ll be its chief missionary. Don’t expect much help from them, unless its in the path of their one-track mind, in which case you can expect too much help.

Start With Rocks; Bang Them Together The Only Way to learn programming is to start with Bare Iron and work your way up. These types are easy to spot: they’re screaming in loathe every time somebody suggests using technology that is built on anything else. No! You have to start learning the Basic Concepts first and use them as building blocks! If you use Python, they want you to start with C++; if you use C++, they want you to use C; if you start with C, they want you to start with assembly; if you start with assembly, they want you to start in binary; if you start using a computer, they want you to start by digging raw silicon out of the group and forging it into circuits.

Stupid Is A Virtue The anti-learning learner coalition is here to remind you that stupid is the new smart, illiteracy is the new reading, and not coding is the new coding. Since they’re worthless wastes of carbon anyway, they just bettered their circumstances by declaring their failure a success, their lack of achievement an achievement, and now they invite you to join them. Surprisingly enough, if you do, you’ll discover that they work harder justifying why everybody but them is an elitist than they would have done if they just joined the elitists and did some goddamned work for a change.

The Interface Astronaut Who has time to code when you have blogs to fill with stylish pontifications about The Proper Way To Design? These people have discovered that the way to avoid work is to talk about work forever. Warning: They jump into management as soon as they can.

If It’s New, It Sucks And you kids get off my yard! These types never change, regardless if they’re 20 or 40 or 80. Whatever the standard was when they graduated, that was the Golden Perfect Status Quo; everything that came before that was holy writ, everything that has come after that has been bad news all around. Computing went downhill the day the Amiga died, or with the invention of the first IDE, or when people stopped using Slime for Lisp development, or when Java went open source, or whatever.

If It’s Old, It Sucks Just like the last example, but reversed and surprisingly equally determined in their point of view. They never get anything done, of course, because the next new thing comes out before you can finish reading the End User License Agreement for the most recent new thing. Of course they will deride anythign that anyone else is using at all, and if you adopt what they use, they’ll abandon it and denounce it as “played out.”

If I’m Using It, It Sucks The only reality-based philosophy. You’re using it, so you can gripe about it. When you stop using it, you ironically stop griping about it because now you’re griping about the next thing. But at least you’re using something!

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