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Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

mkdev.me

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Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#221

Post by dep_b »

dasmoth wrote: post #178
dep_b wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually there’s a style that’s mandated by large authorities like C# formatting is mandated by Microsoft and JetBrains. Copying their style gets you there for 80%. The rest is whatever you agree on and usually not something that bothers me. If you’re the guy that thinks having a 300 line function in an 8000 line class is just an individual way of expressing yourself you’ll have to fight me. If you think real tabs is…

The fact that you’ve named an IDE vendor rather emphasises that there is a substantial gray area. By no means everyone wants to use an IDE (let alone that specific one...)

True. But for Objective-C I often used the NY Times style guide. Just whatever the one is that is the most complete and most easy to maintain really. But I notice with C# that if I copy-paste reasonably fresh code from Stack Overflow to VS + RS I sometimes get zero warnings because the other programmer uses exactly the same toolchain and style. Same goes for Python PEP8 in PyCharm. Personally I like the idea of having a strong similarity in code style within an ecosystem, especially when dealing with libraries that more or less follow the same conventions as the code that I wrote myself.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#222

Post by vvanders »

bethly wrote: post #215
vvanders wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also seen the opposite happen as well where endless feedback and getting the "perfect" architecture has almost sunk a few teams. If you take too long building the ivory tower then the market may move past you. The thing I care about is if it's a deliberate decision made with consideration of the rest of the business of if it's driven by fear/reactionary/habit. The former usually means that you'll try and budget…

Any team striving for a perfect architecture rather than building something that works and then seeing where the bottlenecks are isn't focused on "code quality": they are ignoring best practice in favor of intellectual satisfaction. The best software architecture is any architecture that solves the problem.

Yeah, there's a natural tension in this. I know I tend to wander towards the "ship it" category but yet I've found my best work was when I was paired with someone on the "correctness" side of the equation.

It forces a constant re-evaluation of your methods and reasoning on both sides which leads to something even better than the two individual approaches.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#223

Post by bethly »

bryansum wrote: post #208

One huge problem is that there’s no context-indepedent definition of quality code, and criticisms often suffer from hindsight bias.

This is why Sarah Mei's idea of Livable Code is so exciting to me: it talks about context-dependent quality code, and lets us talk about developing the context needed to move our definition of "quality code" to a more effective/more reliable/faster/faster-to-develop place.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#224

Post by jogjayr »

reaperducer wrote: post #141
ManlyBread wrote: post #115

I've tried this approach in the past and and it has made me very bitter. Eventually I realized that the company I worked for enforced no accountability for bad code, so I would often open the solution later and found a pile of ugly hacks or other mess. Code reviews? Refactoring? "We don't have time and no one is going to pay for it". Eventually you come to a conclusion that if no one cares then why should you? If any…

It can be very frustrating, but ultimately it's a reflection on you. Whether you're a coder, or a librarian, or a janitor, take pride in your work. Do the best job you can. If everyone else's code looks like crap, that's on them. When new people come on, they'll see your work compared to the slackers, and start emulating you, not them. Like anything in life: Do the right thing, even when you're surrounded by villains…

"Like anything in life: Do the right thing, even when you're surrounded by villains."

That's a tiring way to live life too. If you're surrounded by villains, you should try to leave and go to a place where doing the right thing is easy. If at all possible.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#225

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

reaperducer wrote: post #141
ManlyBread wrote: post #115

I've tried this approach in the past and and it has made me very bitter. Eventually I realized that the company I worked for enforced no accountability for bad code, so I would often open the solution later and found a pile of ugly hacks or other mess. Code reviews? Refactoring? "We don't have time and no one is going to pay for it". Eventually you come to a conclusion that if no one cares then why should you? If any…

It can be very frustrating, but ultimately it's a reflection on you. Whether you're a coder, or a librarian, or a janitor, take pride in your work. Do the best job you can. If everyone else's code looks like crap, that's on them. When new people come on, they'll see your work compared to the slackers, and start emulating you, not them. Like anything in life: Do the right thing, even when you're surrounded by villains…

I wish I could upvote this more than once. Reminds me of one of my old Army SSG. Simply, do the right thing.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#226

Post by zamber »

space_fountain wrote: post #184
reaperducer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be very frustrating, but ultimately it's a reflection on you. Whether you're a coder, or a librarian, or a janitor, take pride in your work. Do the best job you can. If everyone else's code looks like crap, that's on them. When new people come on, they'll see your work compared to the slackers, and start emulating you, not them. Like anything in life: Do the right thing, even when you're surrounded by villains…

I definitely do the best I can, but as someone sort of in this position I worry that I'm becoming a worse programmer for it. I'm junior enough that I often don't know what to do. I've never gotten really good at full unit testing for example. I really do think in situations like this my best bet is trying to find somewhere where they follow better practices.

Imitation is the best form of flattery but you can also be proactive in your learning how to write better. Read code that's open-source and solves similar issues for a similar case in the same tech stack. Understand the architecture and conventions. Understand where the codebase has areas for improvement.

Before you learn about types of hammers and nails learn when to use which one.

The problem with more senior people is that they can lack the time and motivation to teach you so until you don't own the problem yourself pushing it to "ppl don't want to teach me :(" will not do anything.

Also, practice makes perfect and good coding practices tend to be somewhat universal.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#227

Post by user5994461 »

SIRHAMY wrote: post #160
Terr_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation right now: The company thinks that any feature-wanter who's loud enough is automatically "one of the product owners" (always plural, always ambiguous) with the ability to tap an outsourced development house for "additional capacity." I regularly come across months-old new code that the main team wasn't even consulted about. Reinvented caching layers, eval'ed code in database tables, file-do…

At that point, you could probably bring in Legal. Not only are these just poor coding practices, but some of these things are very serious security vulnerabilities. If you've got contracts with clients, or even if you're licensed straight to individuals, it's a good bet that you're breaching some data security/privacy rules. Legal would definitely want to know and take steps to correct.

This is terrible advice. Do not go to legal for this, ever. This is putting yourself and the company in a very bad position.

Fix the vulnerability if you can. Help junior developers understand common issues if you can. Then move on to the next job with better practices.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#228

Post by user5994461 »

Retric wrote: post #167
drdeadringer wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just your coworkers today, "future you" as well. I've known of or read the situation where someone opens some old code, thinks "Who wrote this hot garbage?", and then realizes it was them.

If it worked for a year without bugs, then it's not garbage. Did it work? Can you read and understand it? Then it has value.

Unless it had no users or it was so much garbage that nobody reported any bug.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#229

Post by dragonwriter »

SIRHAMY wrote: post #160
Terr_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation right now: The company thinks that any feature-wanter who's loud enough is automatically "one of the product owners" (always plural, always ambiguous) with the ability to tap an outsourced development house for "additional capacity." I regularly come across months-old new code that the main team wasn't even consulted about. Reinvented caching layers, eval'ed code in database tables, file-do…

At that point, you could probably bring in Legal. Not only are these just poor coding practices, but some of these things are very serious security vulnerabilities. If you've got contracts with clients, or even if you're licensed straight to individuals, it's a good bet that you're breaching some data security/privacy rules. Legal would definitely want to know and take steps to correct.

> but some of these things are very serious security vulnerabilities.

That's a very good reason to bring in your Security Officer or a similar compliance officer; its probably not a good reason to go straight from dev to Legal.

Re: Maintaining code quality when nobody cares

#230

Post by user5994461 »

Kesty wrote: post #67
aalleavitch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely the situation I am in right now, and I desperately need all the guidance I can get. We’re talking thousands of lines of React components that rely regularly on manipulating global js variables, mixed with MVC 5 written in Razor delivering variables in script tags, mixed with outdated jQuery, that’s all just concat’d together with gulp and that hasn’t seen a refactor in years of changing hands with…

Welcome to code development in the real world 101. You either go insane, give up and take up beekeeping, start your own company or finally decide to not give a shit anymore and start hacking the same way as everybody else because in the end your are not sending astronauts to Mars, and it works "most of the time" is good enough for the clients and the price and time they are willing to pay.

Real world 303.

Work for a company and project sending astronaut to Mars, then you can care and be surrounded by coworkers who care too.

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