Programmers: be an engineer, Not an artist

It seems to me that Open Source software as a whole suffers from “messiness” — this is perhaps due to the fact that a lot of Open Source stuff is written by students and hobbyists who do not (yet) have formal training in software engineering or design. This greenness shows in the programs: they (usually) work (kind of), but they tend to be brittle and exhibit interface quirks that an experienced engineer would instinctively avoid. –Kelly McNeill