in reply to Bad coffee?

Let me quote from chapter 2 of The Mythical Man-Month which was published in 1974:
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug."
This was written about scheduling delays. However the thought, like much else of that book, still holds today...

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Programmers as Optimists?
by footpad (Abbot) on Oct 21, 2000 at 20:48 UTC
    Tilly,

    Optimists? I don't know if I'd go that far. We're optimistic that we can solve a problem and make easier for the user of our solutions, even if we're the user.

    But, we're pretty pessimistic about other things. We're convinced that certain commerical vendors will make our lives more difficult. We're positive that upper management will not provide us with the resources (time, bodies, understanding, training, tools, etc) that we believe we need to do the job faster and more efficiently.

    On the whole, I think the more seasoned of us prefer to think that we're realists. It doesn't matter if the glass is half-full or half-empty. The relevant question is "Who drank out of it?"

    :-)

    But I do agree that finishing systems involves a bit of mental sorcery.

    -- f
[reply]
      After dealing with end users of the code, I'd say it's not so much 'Who drank out of the glass', as 'Just what is that stuff they left in the glass??'

      *I lost my .sig. Do you have a spare?*
[reply]

In Section Meditations