I have come to the conclusion that the best and most advanced windows programmers are the virus writers. Let’s think about this. Microsoft and other windows software companies consider making programs “easier to use” an upgrade to their software. While they don’t make their interface or the procedure in which the software is used intuitive for the user to control. They do however take the decision making out of your hands and just do it (ala’ autoupdate “windows update” or “phoning home” for updates or changing registry settings or installing extra “needed” software).
So based on this we can deduce that taking control and thinking for you is an example of a good program. This is exactly what the virus writers do and they do it more efficiently and effectively. These programmers take control of your computer without your knowledge and without original source code to windows to know the flaws of the system. They have to reverse engineer the system and find the flaws themselves.
Another basis for good programming is lack of bulk, or code efficiency. This is not seen by today’s Internet Explorer or for you not so technically inclined the “blue E” on your desktop. It hovers somewhere around 26 MB. For what? To decipher the limited abount of standards it supports!? This code efficiency is no longer seen in the commercial world of software (rarely anyways) as it is not an economically sound decision to rework the code for features for size speed when you could hack together something quick and dirty and push it out the door and count on the hard drives and processor upgrades to make up the performance gap.
Today’s virus writers are very efficient and deliver their program in a size so small that it is not even noticeable by most people and the resources they take from the computer are minimal so as not to be noticed. This is in conjunction with taking over the computer without the owners knowledge further verifying the virus writer’s ability to create a good program.
A good programmer is not judged by only the code he can produce, but the amount of time it takes to produce it and patch and errors, bugs, or software holes. Microsoft is always touting how quickly it patches security flaws and program flaws in it’s own software (cough, bullshit, cough).
The virus writers are constantly having to change or modify their programs to counter the patches made by the software vendor. They do so fairly quickly, so quick in fact that they manage to slip by Microsoft’s extremely quick security patch team with a few hundred thousand or so infected PC’s. Constantly modifying and patching their software to keep up with the technology trends of tomorrow. These guys never stop — what a great work ethic!
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}