But first, why today? Why after all this time do I now feel compelled to scribble about this one personality?
The reason is because this industry is in crisis and that personality is a key player in the drama.
That personality is the so-called "know-it-all".
Crisis? What Crisis? Are not software and high tech companies making money? Perhaps, but that only hides the real problem. The crisis I am referring to is the security horror the mainstream media has now latched onto. Yes. I know. Security has always been a problem and the media has now only found out it exists.
The causes of the issue is complex and has many actors. From the half-baked products rushed to market to "realize-revenue", the hapless neophyte who does not consider the malicious use case, to finally, my favourite as you can imagine, the know-it-all.
And I see it all the time. No, they will not consult with experienced staff on the subject, they will roll their own. No, they will not present their design to experienced security staff, they know better. And no, they will not ask questions, since they have no questions to ask, because they know it all. And no, they will not consider customer opinions and just deem this is what their security policy should be even though they have no security experience whatsoever (I mean, how hard could it be). They would perform their own brain surgery if they weren't unconscious at the time.
They are the bulldozers who attempt to talk over and interrupt others with their amazingness. The male of the species will announce to their colleagues that they are "brest-feeding experts" (true story, you can't make this shit up) after they read a book because their wife (poor soul) is expecting to pop out their spawn.
This creature will look at existing code, and even though there is no reason to, change that code (and introduce risk) because it was not the way they would write it, and therefore it must be wrong.
To be perfectly honest I am not surprised we are seeing the hacking headlines. Its a long time overdue. And it will be with us for a long time until software development teams can deal with, educate, and manage this personality. And they need to do so soon, because its killing us.
http://www.dilbert.com/2013-02-24/
