Software developer: not just a derogatory term

Give me a large budget and 12 months, and I'll give you a receipt...

In todays society it seems that computers run everything, from your car and your microwave, to your payslip and leave allocation. In view of all this importance on the correct and deterministic functioning of these machines, one would expect that the design of the functional aspects of all these computers would be trusted only to the brightest, bestest, smartest people in the world, right?

Think again ;-)

The majority of the worlds developers are still-wet-behind-the-ears high-school graduates with a barely functional grasp of primary school mathematics, never mind high school trig. Do I have any proof of this?

Well, no, but then again, you are reading my opinion piece, right? So cool down and read some of my less inflamatory(sp?) thoughts on software development.

The quote at the top, by the way, is roughly paraphrased from Richard Heathfield, seen on comp.lang.c. I do not remember his exact phrase, but that sums it up neatly I hope. If you are Richard Heathfield reading this, send me the corrected phrase and I'll gladly fix it.