Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#91

Post by Illniyar » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:33 AM UTC

indexerror wrote: post #74

renolc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true on both ends. At a previous company, the tech influencers believed in the archaic "do everything in the database." While we were technically using the .Net stack, we weren't allowed to do any actual business logic in C#. Instead it had to all be done in MS-SQL procedures (or at least at much as possible with very little CLR glue). Similarly at my current company, we had a product were the init…

Can you explain why you feel that "do everything in the database" is archaic? A lot of logic (especially authentication logic) can be put in the database only. Not to mention that I won't trust anything that only has application level security, and nothing at database level to check/limit it.

Logic in the Database has the following issues:

1. it doesn't work well with source control

2. deployments, rollback, replication, synchornization - they don't work very well with db procedures

3. unless you connect directly to the db, then you must have some logic on the serverside, usually you end up replicating logic from the db to the serverside

4. Databases languages (even advanced ones like PL/SQL) are not expressive enough

5.It's much easier to scale out the server then the database (and if you are using Oracle/Sql-server etc... also cheaper), and you don't want your database's cpu to be clogged with logic code execution

6.Unit testing (or any testing) is extremely difficult

7.Debugging is hard and convoluted (also it doesn't usually work inside your IDE)

and a whole lot more.

Nothing is absolute or completely obsolete, but it is considered a bad practice for a long time by most industry professionals.

As far as I know the most popular article about it is:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/who-needs-stored-procedures-an...

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#92

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:34 AM UTC

woah wrote: post #79

agentultra wrote: post #33

The "convoluted code" gauge is a double-edged sword. You could also be working at a company with developers who have no experience with the benefits of functional programming. In this scenario it's those who write nested loops, branching if-statements, and mutating side-effects that are in charge and you're the bad developer for using fold and map. You could be seen as an elitist who likes to write clever, obfuscated…

Functional programming does have some useful syntax and principles that can make code easier to reason about. But a much bigger red flag is if a developer is so fixated on a certain programming philosophy or methodology that they don't pay attention to writing simple, good code.

> that they don't pay attention to writing simple, good code.

Amen. If you have a complex problem to solve, and the style is between obfuscated FP and complex OO, the choice is already a bad one. If the code can't be written very clearly, probably the problem is posed wrong, or shouldn't be solved because the maintenance costs will be too high anyway.

The negative contribution developers I find are those that don't challenge the formulation of the problem. This takes some confidence to rather challenge a manager with a better design, rather than actually write a complex solution to a problem to get a pat on the head.

So the most dangerous developers in my book are those that like the pats on the head they get from solving complex problems by writing complex solutions.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#93

Post by falsedan » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:35 AM UTC

jim_d wrote: post #36

tyingq wrote: post #17

"He made 2 changes to the code base over his 6-month tenure there." And the context implies those were the only 2 changes/check-ins. Seems odd that nobody questioned the low output.

This seems strange to me as well. How were they planning/tracking the work that needed to be done for their project?

More questions: where were the code reviews and testing to show that this work should have shipped?

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#94

Post by falsedan » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:37 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #62

Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution is easy there -- promote away.

Please no. That might get them out of your hair ( maybe ), but then you've just put someone incompetent in a position where they can exercise it even further. I think people doing this is the direct cause of some head-scratchingly awful middle managers I've had to deal with..

Most middle managers are awful though, because they get no training.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#95

Post by oselhn » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:39 AM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #46

taeric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, many debugging tool chains are crap with folds and maps instead of loops. And code is rarely written in anger, but often debugged that way.

Isn't that the truth! Debugging can bring out the worst in the best of us. Luckily I don't often have to debug code from functional programmers. The errors are usually mitigated by design and often easier to spot or reason about than in a function with a dozen branches mutating the object behind a pointer. The reason I call it a double-edged sword is because the majority will determine what is normal or acceptable. I…

You can write functional code with dozens of branches too. In my opinion this is because functional programmers are usually enthusiasts and good programmers. If all programmers start to write functional code you will hate it too.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#96

Post by falsedan » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:41 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #21

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #4

After reading the article, I feel like a code test and discussion and or whiteboard would have filtered the type of developer they mentioned who is a net negative on the code base.

I've seen devs that passed a code test and discussion that had this problem. For example, you can interview someone on a good day, when most of their days are bad days. I don't think there's a magic interview style that prevents this problem. Corrective action and fast firing if necessary have worked for me. And whatever you do, don't impose onerous procedures on all of your devs because one of them screws up on a re…

Corollary: also don't make processes which enforce the habits of your top performers

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#97

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:41 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #21

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #4

After reading the article, I feel like a code test and discussion and or whiteboard would have filtered the type of developer they mentioned who is a net negative on the code base.

I've seen devs that passed a code test and discussion that had this problem. For example, you can interview someone on a good day, when most of their days are bad days. I don't think there's a magic interview style that prevents this problem. Corrective action and fast firing if necessary have worked for me. And whatever you do, don't impose onerous procedures on all of your devs because one of them screws up on a re…

[deleted]

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#98

Post by phyller » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:47 AM UTC

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #4

After reading the article, I feel like a code test and discussion and or whiteboard would have filtered the type of developer they mentioned who is a net negative on the code base.

I agree with the code test, the discussion and whiteboard I would say depends on the type of developer. The former member of my team that produced negative work did well with discussions and popular little whiteboard problems. Our normal policy has become to have applicants do a mini project that represents actual work that we are doing. So far it has worked flawlessly. This guy didn't have to do that because he was so experienced. He ended up creating over-complicated, very buggy code that took more time for us to review than it would have taken for someone else to write. And when we needed to make even minor changes to his code the fastest way to do it was to just delete it all and start from scratch, everything was so complicated and codependent.

He had an appearance of technical skill, was very well spoken, knew all the interview questions and answers, but had really bad judgment and somewhat poor logic when he had to come up with novel solutions. On the contrary, I taught myself and didn't have the CS background to do well in purely technical interviews. But I was given the practical challenge and crushed it. I knew what I needed to know for my job. Of course I had a lot to learn (and still do), but I was productive from the start, or so I have been told.

I guess there is nothing wrong with whiteboard tests, but I think a practical coding challenge where the applicant makes part of an application is much more valuable. You can see that they have basic coding ability, but also how they organize code and break down larger problems. Can they get the big picture right while making clean, maintainable code?

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#99

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:48 AM UTC

> An even more egregious form of negative work is a developer who is stuck using out of date programming practices AND has a large amount of influence at a company.

Well, out of date may also be seen as "battle proven". Just look at the JS scene and Angular 1 vs 2 (not to mention the boatload of now dead frameworks, tools etc)... often enough sticking with proven tech instead of hipster dung is the more long-term viable solution. But of course to do this, managers and developers have to adopt a long-term view (one or two years) instead of a 2 week sprint...

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#100

Post by lostboys67 » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 8:49 AM UTC

renolc wrote: post #87

indexerror wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you feel that "do everything in the database" is archaic? A lot of logic (especially authentication logic) can be put in the database only. Not to mention that I won't trust anything that only has application level security, and nothing at database level to check/limit it.

Absolutely. SQL is great, and having the DB just give you the correct data from the get go is convenient. But in the case where complex logic is necessary, SQL is much more difficult for correct implementation than something more expressive. You _could_ delve into cursors or long merge statements or what have you, but in business logic specifically, the code will be read and altered numerous times by several differen…

And your point is? yes sometimes you have complex business logic but throwing way all the benefits of using a RDBS is a sign that your developers cant hack SQL properly.