Sounds like this is a security related article, doesn’t? Ahh, and right you are — only it’s not the security article that you thought it was. Rather this is here to point out the reasoning why being a professional programmer should only be left to those who hack in their spare time.

I have been looking at houses recently with the expectation of acquiring one. This has presented to me many educational opportunities. One of these was learning all about the process of appraisals and assessments — that is how much does the State wish to bribe you from your livelihood? Fortunately for us this information is public knowledge and easily attainable at your local
county assesor’s or collector’s webpage.

After learning how to use mechanize and hpricot well enough I was able to scrape large portions of my friendly Boone County’s webpage. I then proceeded to start working on other neighboring counties and large cities in the magnificient state of Missouri. This is where I learned once again that those who hack for money will ALWAYS be of lesser quality programmers than those who code because they like to. I’m not saying that the coder who codes for money is less intelligent — I’ve met many programmers that have what my girlfriend terms “google-brain”; however their ways of thinking about things are:

• inferior
• unimaginative

Let me show you proof:

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<form action="searchProperty.asp" method="post"
<input type="submit" value="Next  &gt;&gt;" name="next">
<input type="hidden" value="SELECT * FROM qryProperty 
  WHERE FullAddress LIKE '%HALL%' ORDER BY ADDRESS" 
  name="sql"/>
<input type="hidden" value="1" name="lowcount">
<input type="hidden" value="10" name="uppcount">
<input type="hidden" value="next" name="dir">
</form>

Had I been even 5-6 years younger than I am now the State of Missouri would probably be in shambles…I mean, this is just a 14-19 yo hacker’s wet dream. I found this CASUALLY looking at the css so I could scrape the page — NOT hack it.