paper over : Java Glossary

In its most blatant form, an incompetent programmer will write some kludge to remedy a symptom without diagnosing the underlying cause and correcting it. For example, if the bottom line turned out negative he would add a Math. abs() call to correct it.

If a program behaves in an unexpected way, but the results seem ok, the incompetent programmer will suppress his curiosity and carry on with something else, not even leaving a note in the code to warn the next programmer who is assigned the job of correcting what turned out to be a fatal flaw. A competent programmer does not leave a program until its always behaving just as he expected it to.