The cowboy coder

Recently I was hunting for do's and dont's of coding, and I came across this article on c2.com, which provided an extensive list of how a coder should NOT code. The article states, and I quote, "Cowboy Coders are programmers who write code according to their own rules. They may be very good at writing code, but it doesn't generally follow the standards, processes, policies, or anything else derived from the group."

Here are some traits of cowboy coders:

• The speed with which I can hack something together determines my worth
• People who need comments in order to understand my code are too dumb to be working with me
• People who ask me questions about my code are too dumb to understand it, and (therefore) are too dumb  

    to be working with me

• Other people's code is just crappy, but mine is self-descriptive and beautiful
• Exploiting a compiler-dependent language feature to save a line of code is "elegant"
• Other people on my team cause all of the bugs; I'm the one that fixes them
• My code is never at fault, always perfect, and I don't make mistakes
• Since my code is never at fault, I don't need to test it thoroughly, if at all
• Since my code is always perfect, it never needs to be refactored no matter how long it's been in the

    codebase or how much has changed around it

• Since I never make mistakes, I can yell at anyone else who does
• Since my code is perfect, if the program crashes due to unexpected data, it's the user's fault for entering

    bad data.

• Since my code is perfect, if the program fails after a minor machine configuration change, it's the

    sysadmins fault for changing it.

• Since my code is perfect, if the program runs too slowly, it's the managements fault for not providing a

    faster machine.

These provide a good guideline of how NOT TO CODE.