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Things That Annoy Programmers

kevinwilliampang.com

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Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#4

Post by SingAlong »

IMHO #11 could be added as "unindented code". I was going to a guy's code yesterday and I felt very _irritated_ to read it, that i ended up spending 15min indenting it myself. I'm sure a lot of people don't like unindented code.

and I totally agree with #1, it's very true for me. And especially when I've used some framework and the framework has been updated to a newer version with lots of goodies, i feel lazy to maintain code that been written in older version of the framework. (and even more lazier to update it to the new framework if it requires lots of changes). I just leave it working fine in it's current state. Seems like thats what results in legacy software. So I now follow my new rule-- working on beta versions of frameworks so that i can leave it unmaintained for longer time and spend the time on new ideas.

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#5

Post by edanm »

Funny that #10, 'Comments that explain the “how” but not the “why”', quotes from an article by Jeff Atwood to show how the comment should have been written. But in the original article, Jeff actually says that that commenting style is also not as good as refactoring the code:

"That must be what I was getting at, right? Some sort of pleasant, middle-of-the-road compromise between the two polar extremes of no comments whatsoever and carefully formatted epic poems every second line of code?

Not exactly. Rather than add a comment, I'd refactor to this:

  private double SquareRootApproximation(n) {
    r = n / 2;
    while ( abs( r - (n/r) ) > t ) {
      r = 0.5 * ( r + (n/r) );
    }
    return r;
  }
  System.out.println( "r = " + SquareRootApproximation(r) ); "

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#6

Post by dagw »

edanm wrote: post #5

Funny that #10, 'Comments that explain the “how” but not the “why”', quotes from an article by Jeff Atwood to show how the comment should have been written. But in the original article, Jeff actually says that that commenting style is also not as good as refactoring the code: "That must be what I was getting at, right? Some sort of pleasant, middle-of-the-road compromise between the two polar extremes of no comments…

I'd consider that new code a step backwards since it removes the vital words "Newton-Raphson". If I didn't recognize the algorithm I might have a very hard time working out exactly how and why that lump of code approximates a square root. With the words Newton-Raphson included somewhere I could easily look it up and find out everything I need to know about not only how and why it works but also its strength and weaknesses. Personally whenever I use some non-trivial algorithm I haven't made up I tend to include a comment pointing to the book or paper I got it from so that others can get the canonical description of what the algorithm does.

Ideally I'd even like to see a brief comment on why Newton-Raphson was chosen as well. Is there a good reason why I shouldn't replace that code with some other square root approximation technique or was it chosen because it was the only algorithm the author knew?

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#7

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

SingAlong wrote: post #4

IMHO #11 could be added as "unindented code". I was going to a guy's code yesterday and I felt very _irritated_ to read it, that i ended up spending 15min indenting it myself. I'm sure a lot of people don't like unindented code. and I totally agree with #1, it's very true for me. And especially when I've used some framework and the framework has been updated to a newer version with lots of goodies, i feel lazy to mai…

Do you not have an editor/IDE that can automatically format code for you? Both Visual Studio and Eclipse can do this, and editors like Vim or Emacs can too.

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#9

Post by edw519 »

A few more of my own:

Being told "how" instead of "what". Use this API to access that database to do this process. Don't tell me how to do something. Tell me what you want. Let me figure out how. That's my job.

Being told "what" instead of "why". So you need a 4 GB csv download of the entire database every day at noon? Why? Oh, in that case, why don't you just use which has been right at your fingertips all along. If you don't understand the system, ask and I'll be glad to help. But don't make up unnecessary work for me.

Being asked for data to put into your Excel spreadsheet which you will screw up 8 minutes later. Then you want me to fix it. Forget it. If you have a business problem, tell me about it. We will find a solution together. Lone rangers don't get help. I'm not Tonto.

Calling me every 42 minutes for 3 days asking, "Is it done yet?" No, it's not. I'll let you know when it is and if there's a problem, I'll let you know about that, too.

Not calling me for 3 weeks after a release. Either it's working perfectly or no one's using it. It would be nice to know which.

Criticizing my work in a meeting in front of others without talking to me first. Big mistake. You don't want to piss off your waiter and you don't want to piss off your programmer.

Meetings when a phone call would have sufficed.

Phone calls when an email would have sufficed.

Status meetings. Pointless. I'll email status. Any questions, click "Reply".

Code walkthroughs that are more concerned with syntax than function.

SQL SELECTs inside of iterations. Please go work at McDonald's.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

Web filters that screen out Hacker News. Grounds for divorce.

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#10

Post by DrSprout »

SingAlong wrote: post #4

IMHO #11 could be added as "unindented code". I was going to a guy's code yesterday and I felt very _irritated_ to read it, that i ended up spending 15min indenting it myself. I'm sure a lot of people don't like unindented code. and I totally agree with #1, it's very true for me. And especially when I've used some framework and the framework has been updated to a newer version with lots of goodies, i feel lazy to mai…

I knew a physicist who only programmed C++ in notepad. He was having some problem with some multiple-body simulation he was working on, and I took one look at his code and told him to paste it into Gedit or Notepad++ or something (since he was a die-hard anti-Emacs/Vim zealot.) He refused, couldn't figure it out, did an "exact transliteration" of his code into Python and suddenly it worked.
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