Why programmers are bad at spin
April, 2007
Programmers survive by paying attention to the ugliness in their code. If you wake me up in the middle of the night and ask what I’m dreaming about, I’ll probably tell you what the three ugliest parts of our code are, and how I’m going to fix each of them. So when someone asks me about the code, my instinct is to describe the bugs. They’re just the first order of business! I think that’s why programmers have a hard time putting a positive spin on things, as compared to salespeople. We have a natural tendency to look for and focus on the things that are not perfect.