I only do hobby programming so I have never had to work with others. Sounds like a shitty time. Better just to start over fresh if you have the time.

Slash, burn, restart from scratch after consulting with whatever stakeholder / BA is needing the project on the business side.

Don't worry. That guy left, will get re-hired somewhere else in no time because developers are in such short supply everywhere, and he will immediately begin telling everyone at the new place how terrible the old place was. I can already hear the complaints of how he was being held back by incompetence at his last gig and how he was the only one keeping the place afloat. There will be prognostications of how your company will shortly go under because he left.

I've heard it all before, I'll hear it all again. I'm actually hearing it now from a guy whom we hired six months ago. That's just how it be, though.

Just remember that a Comp. Sci. degree means someone understood computer science well enough to get a degree. Do not make the mistake that many people make and assume that Computer Science as an academic discipline has anything at all to do with on-the-ground software development.

Comp. Sci. is a mathematical discipline. Actual software development is basically the blue-collar work of the white-collar world. It's technical, but it has way more in common with jobs like electrician and plumber than it does with any mathematical discipline (in most shops).

If I knew then what I know now, I would have skipped the Comp. Sci. degree and just went straight to work.

Computer science is a young discipline. You are pretty green and already noticing that there's more to it than knowing how to code.

Try not to get too angry. Work on your own professional development including soft skills. You will soon learn your value compared to others and should be able to turn that into higher and higher salaries.

When you are at a point where you can influence hiring decisions look for passion and professionalism in addition to the technical knowledge. GL on your rewrite

I'm mostly self taught, and a colleague in my Electrical Engineering classes was having troubles with their C++ class. So, I offered to help. I taught them more about programming in a couple of hours, than they were able to pick up in 2 months of that class. After sitting down with me, they were basically able to teach themselves the entire rest of the course, completely disregarding the teacher.

College programming courses are a shitshow.

That's a rewrite.

First year programmers have an idealistic view of how the code should be, that it should adhere to a university orthodoxy, and have no concept that the customer absolutely does not care at all about that. So businesses do whatever.

Contractors have a vested interest in the code being a continually breaking mess, to perpetuate income.

Absolutely learn not to have interpersonal conflicts, it's just a job.

One common personality type includes being judgemental.

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stories of working with bad programmers

That's just stories about programmers.

Now, a story about a good programmer?

That's what we call lies.

Now, I could give you stories about programmers, going back to the days before the internet existed and all of our workstations looked way more futuristic than they do today, when real men wrote real code according to real specs that had been generated through six real months of real meetings that really happened and cocaine, but instead I will go beyond that and give you a generalised algorithm that will allow you to generate your own stupid-IT-cow-worker stories in the comfort of your own gamer chair.

foreach (coworker) {
    if (coworker.style != self.style)
        put BAD_PROGRAMMER;
    if (coworker.preferredlang != self.preferredlang)
        put BAD_PROGRAMMER;
    if (coworker.computerskills() == 0)
        put BAD_PROGRAMMER;
    if (coworker.preferrededitor != self.preferrededitor)
        die $error //TODO swear eternal vengeance; see his line ended; bathe in the blood of his relatives
    }
    GOTO alcoholism;

There, now you too can feel like an IT Veteran - a veritable cybersamurai of the digital wasteland. Now all you need is to develop strong feelings about vim and then you're practically a grognard. And Mike, if you bring down the servers at three in the morning on a saturday again because you and your shitty macbook tried to push an update straight into production, I am going to take my car, and crash it into your fucking house.

There are definitely people that can be annoying. Sometimes it's just a personality clash. Do what you can to distance yourself from people like that if possible, unless you think you're actually learning something from him.

There are many "techno-sissies" who have no business in any field of engineering.

But some people are trying to water-down the industry. The proof is in the fact that every 10 minutes there's a "new" programming language.

As if the problem all along has been the programming language...

Loud, obnoxious, constantly swearing while

Not your fault, it's a management fail. 1 programmer = 1 office, or your company leaves a lot of money on the table. He who manages a chip-factory and puts the carpentry and the den with cats into the fab with the high-purity filters makes himself the laughing stock of the industry. He who manages a programming factory and jams thinkers into cubicles makes himself a model of frugality for some reason.

Our manager never trusted him to communicate with clients.

Smart manager. Gifted engineers often suck with people. That's why incellism is so epidemic among prodigy programmers. You will have difficulty using a modern formula-1 race car in a dirt-track competition. Lock programmers in the basement and make sure they never see clients or female employees, not even at lunch.

pair program

Might yield good results occasionally, but as a way of programming it drives most people into contemplating suicide or leaving for a company without pair programming.

"Almost done" is a meaningless fucking statement.

Have a piggy-bank for quarters in meetings. He who says "now, that's totally easy" or "almost done" pays a quarter as a penalty.

Stupid. Pointless.

Might be on to something; hard to tell without specifics.

he thought an interface was the same thing as a class

OOP is probably overrated for Non-UI code, but that gap in his knowledge is indeed a red flag.

Didn't understand that his poorly written code was in fact, not doing the same thing as the method from that very helpful library.

Your library? I'm not trying to piss you off, but often a maternal view is unhelpful.

If he got stuck, time to bother our contractor for an answer, or just be completely lost.

Source code is only marginally easier to comprehend than a hex-listing of machine code. Documentation solves most problems if it is taken seriously and not as a hoop to jump through for audits.

Occasionally took credit for things I did.

OMG punch his face in minesweeper. Unironically very bad style, probably a criminal.

Didn't own up to bugs he would create. Just blamed the codebase for being stupid and overly complicated with all these nonsense classes and such.

I have seen shit like that where every one, including the authors, agreed that that was indeed the state of the matter.

I have inherited a project he was working on

Could be worse. Most of the time, the idiot who cobbled together some crock of entropy that blows a fuse upon all edge-cases is the smart, efficient worker-bee and you, who is later supposed to fix "a few problems" with very slow progress due to clarity-fails, obfuscation, stack-exchange pasta and cargo cult is the retarded under-achiever and low-potential.

You are totally right in that the software "industry" is fundamentally broken, even without obnoxious work-mates.