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Things That Annoy Programmers

kevinwilliampang.com

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Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#11

Post by jacquesm »

edw519 wrote: post #9

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…

If you list 'how' instead of 'what' and then continue to list 'what' instead of 'why', you could save yourself one aggravation in between by being merely upset at 'how' instead of 'why' ;)

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#12

Post by avinashm »

edw519 wrote: post #9

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 want to piss off your waiter and you don't want to piss off your programmer.

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#14

Post by mawhidby »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #7
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.

I have someone on my team who uses SlickEdit, and it messes up all the indentations when I look at the same code in Eclipse. I have to spend a few minutes reformatting it every time he makes changes to the code, and it's a real pain.

Re: Things That Annoy Programmers

#19

Post by jherdman »

dualboot wrote: post #18

Meetings. stabs self

Meetings can be exceedingly fruitful when done well. The other day I found myself chasing a solution for a good hour or so. Realizing the inanity of this, I called together the interested parties, explained my issue, and together we worked out a feasible solution and corrected some of my misunderstandings. Total time commitment of the meeting? Thirty minutes.

The next time you find yourself in a fruitless meeting, consider the things you could do to ensure future meetings are more valuable in the future, and work with management to get your ideas in motion. Hopefully you'll improve your situation, and you'll show initiative that'll look great when your next review comes up.

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