How not to go about a programming assignment

Computer programming students invariably fall into more than one bad habit. It can be extremely difficult to eradicate them (and many lecturers and professional programmers keep succumbing to them time and again). I wrote this when, in the days leading up to an assignment deadline, I saw these things happening so often that I couldn't help but recall my classmates and I a decade earlier... doing exactly the same things as my students. This article is an attempt to show these irrational attitudes in an ironical way, intending to make our students aware of bad habits without admonishing them.