"The argument in favor of Programmer B is based on the myth that existing code is somehow superior to your own..."

Well, i don't necessarily disagree with that, but .. "The program is required for a demo Tuesday."

So sure, A will have improved some kind of skill - but there is an equal chance that that that skill will be thrown away with the demo. Besides, how can one say that B doesn't already have that skill and realizes that her/his time would be better spent with the family?

Say that the program is not for a demo - well, any serious application is going to need more than a weekend to just hack together. Shops that don't realize this are doomed to spend endless hours debugging and recoding mistakes that could have been avoided by proper research and design - proper skills that i'll bet that B is familiar with. ;)

But, we have digressed away from the original question, which was basically what is the difference between cheating in school and using existing code on the job. I'd tell you my opinion on this, but i would just be repeating what MeowChow has already excellently said.

Update re: reply:
I only said that because i speak from experience. I have written demo's that were never used and i have not completely forgotten any learned skills - but i didn't waste my time by re-inventing wheels that would end up in /dev/null either. ;) (that that that ... gotta work on my grammar). Oh, and give yourself a year - you will forget more than you credit yourself for remembering. I know i sure ... what's that word?

jeffa

"I drank what?"
--Socrates

In reply to (jeffa) 3Re: Initiative or otherwise? by jeffa
in thread Initiative or otherwise? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.