Real Programmers Don’t Read Code
OPENING Back in the good old days — the Golden Era of computing, roughly March 2025 — it was easy to separate the Real Programmers from the Quiche Eaters. Real Programmers orchestrated. Quiche Eaters typed. A Real Programmer said things like "spin up six subagents and gate on the eval suite," and the Quiche Eaters said things like "I prefer to understand my own code" — a sentence with the same…
Once upon a time, in the promising days of computing, the world could easily distinguish between Real Programmers and Quiche Eaters. Real Programmers took charge, while Quiche Eaters typed. A Real Programmer might say something along the lines of "spin up six subagents and gate on the eval suite," while a Quiche Eater would simply comment, "I prefer to understand my own code."
However, times have changed, and a worrying trend has emerged — the resurgence of Quiche Eaters, who are now hired as reviewers, verification engineers, and even as people whose primary job is to read the code written by agents. Employers should take note of the differences between these ceremonial roles and the Real Programmer, as the door-opener should be the one let go.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
