As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of programs

> YOU DO NOT NEED A JAVASCRIPT-POWERED CUSTOM TEXTBOX WIDGET.

How else am I supposed to irritate users these days? The blink tag and pop-ups don't work.

"Why are programmers so slow?"

https://tube.cadence.moe/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&t=24m28s

--Spoiler alert--

"Because they want to go fast."

To me, genius is not merely smarts, but smarts combined with discipline, causing perseverence that results in a massive output of valuable works by the genius in question.

When I first read about RMS, I realized that he fit this definition better than anyone ever had. He wanted a Unix-like OS that was free from licensing restrictions, so what did he do? He sat down and wrote the tools he would need to write a clone like that (including writing 3 entire versions of emacs from scratch) and he wrote the GNU core pieces from scratch, and he created the GPL. And formed the organization (FSF) to support it. His output in the 1980's along with the lasting power of his contributions is probably unmatched in human history, in terms of the contributions of a single person.

When you consider that his work literally changed the world through the widespread use of GNU/Linux servers which run the entire internet along with the billions of devices which use derivations of his work, it's pretty mind-boggling.

And the fact that he intended to change the world in just the way he did is fascinating. Linus Torvalds intended to write a kernel that would allow him to use his computer in his dorm to do his homework instead of trudging through the snow to use the university timeshare computer terminals. That was his motivation. RMS intended to change the entire world, and just sat down and personally did it.

> genius is not merely smarts, but smarts combined with discipline, causing perseverence that results in a massive output of valuable works by the genius in question.

In some cases definitely; however, I'd argue there are actually two kinds of genius.

One, including RMS, has smarts, discipline, and vision: they have one problem and are willing to put the entire potential of their life's work into its solution.

The other, including mathematican Leonhard Euler (the first example I could think of), has smarts and insight: they have a wide variety of interests and can take a novel perspective on practically any of them. Disciplined or not, with an endless stream of problems and a constant supply of solutions these genii can maintain a tremendous output.

Interestingly- and somewhat of topic- the dichotomy of "people with one large idea" vs. "people with many small ideas" also appears to be applicable throughout the arts, where the evidence is that the former peak in their youth while the latter improve continuously over their lifetimes. Perhaps the same applies for genii?

Euler was truly exceptional. So was Gauss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leonhard_Euler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

Most programming is not done by geniuses. That is not a requirement for clean code. It seems that the requirement for clean, readable, easily reusable code is, as stated in the video above, people who care, or to paraphrase the blog post, people who have empathy for users.

Because it means that they need to spend double the time, however fast they might be able to write code, in order to clean it.

It also means that they test extensively any piece of code they have written, making the whole process even more time consuming.

EDITED: I should have foreseen that Python would be a hellish circle of loops.

Do you think this diagram for the "continue" loop control statement is correct?

Python does not have do while loops.

Thanks, I now see that the author of that tutorial misused what is in fact a diagram for a "do while" loop.

What it was supposed to illustrate is a "for" loop with a "continue" statement in it. The looping condition comes first, then the continue condition is examined, then either the conditional code is executed or the looping condition is examined again. So that diagram totally misses the point.

It is indeed an accurate description of the "do...while" loop, though, which in Python would probably be a while loop with nested if/break/continue statements.

EDIT: I just noticed that the original pic is called "cpp_continue_statement". I should be more careful when choosing my tutorials.