Section 12.3. Awkward People

12.3. Awkward People

It's a stereotype with a strong basis in fact: people who write code for a living or for pleasure are often more introverted than people who sell things or teach other people all day. As with every stereotype, you can think of exceptions, but it's a good place to start making some more generalizations about people in projects. The descriptions below can apply to any group of people, but it's cheap entertainment to place people you know into the categories. You can even make up some more categories of your own:

The Great Leader

One of the people who came up with the ideas for the project in the first place. Usually overwhelmed with requests for information or meetings, and this makes her terse. Prone to venting about other people's code and rewriting it overnight.

The Quiet Hacker

Doesn't bother talking much, just writes the code. Email exchanges with him can be cryptic as he assumes that you have recently read all the same source code that he has immersed himself in.

The Whiner

Everyone else's interfaces don't work well for what she wants to do. Everyone's else's documentation is unhelpful. The project is out to get in her way.

Standards Guy

Has a touching belief that following published standards is always the Right Thing for the project. Horrified by interoperability tests where software fails to interoperate despite being standards-compliant.

Ms. Inflexible

Doesn't see why she should change her code when you can change yours. When you do change your code to work with hers, she fails to let you know that she changed her code in an entirely different way.

Mothman

He flitters from tool to tool, project to project, drawn to the bright lights, justifying this with the belief that he will surely pass on fruitful ideas to each one. Everybody remembers him, but people often have difficulty remembering exactly what he did for the project.

Afraid-to-Code

It all seems so overwhelmingwhere should she start? Daunted by the fear of breaking something, she does nothing.

When-I-Wrote-Code

Used to be a developer, but is now a manager frustrated by developers. "When I wrote code, I didn't make any mistakes" is one of his thoughts, but he's not foolish enough to voice it aloud.

Just don't forget to notice how people don't really fit in a single category, because we are all a mixture of these types, and still more.