Welcome to the Lounge

From section The Cat Ate My Source Code

The greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak.
~ J.B. Bossuet

One of the cornerstones of the pragmatic philosophy is the idea of taking responsibility for yourself and your actions in terms of your career advancement, your learning and education, your project, and your day-to-day work. Pragmatic Programmers take charge of their own career, and aren’t afraid to admit ignorance or error. It’s not the most pleasant aspect of programming, to be sure, but it will happen—even on the best of projects. Despite thorough testing, good documentation, and solid automation, things go wrong. Deliveries are late. Unforeseen technical problems come up.

These things happen, and we try to deal with them as professionally as we can. This means being honest and direct. We can be proud of our abilities, but we must own up to our shortcomings—our ignorance and our mistakes.