Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#61

Post by ralusek » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:10 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #56

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

Small percentages matter when the game is competitive. Programming is not competitive. I agree with your argument but I think your analogy is bad.

How on earth is programming not competitive? Coming up with the wrong data model can result in millions of dollars in technical debt, a failure to fully realize a product, or certainly allow a competitor to win out. Bad programmers can structure a product so poorly that it is simply unpleasant to work on, and you won't be able to hire or retain engineers.

I think moreso than most careers, a single software engineer is capable of a tremendous amount of good or harm.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#62

Post by derpherpsson » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:13 AM UTC

I spent my first 4 years after the university at a company with very little quality control. We had to talk the bosses into having code reviews. When we began having code reviews my older colleagues never complained about anything - everything went through.

That truly was quantity over quality. Oftentimes I had to wade through piece-of-shit code that really made my soul hurt. Really. Bad.

But in hindsight that was good. It's good to have spent 4 years ONLY writing code 8 hours straight 5 days a week.

But I never, ever, want to go back to anything like that.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#63

Post by lifeisstillgood » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:16 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #56

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

Small percentages matter when the game is competitive. Programming is not competitive. I agree with your argument but I think your analogy is bad.

The field for programming jobs is at least highly competitive- and the OSS field is very winner takes all.

Bad analogies suggest different mental models being discussed - what would you suggest is a better analogy - I would be interested in your mental model.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#64

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:17 AM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #61

skrebbel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small percentages matter when the game is competitive. Programming is not competitive. I agree with your argument but I think your analogy is bad.

How on earth is programming not competitive? Coming up with the wrong data model can result in millions of dollars in technical debt, a failure to fully realize a product, or certainly allow a competitor to win out. Bad programmers can structure a product so poorly that it is simply unpleasant to work on, and you won't be able to hire or retain engineers. I think moreso than most careers, a single software engineer i…

Yeah but no one's goal should be to overtake the current best programmer in the world in whatever ranking. Your goal should be to excel at solving the problems you're facing.

A spouse is capable of a tremendous amount of good or harm, but that doesn't mean marriage is a competition.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#65

Post by djmips » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

innocentoldguy wrote: post #37

> Three years later, I am still very much the apprentice. I used to think I’d get to the point where I could just sit down and breathe out perfect code, but that doesn’t happen. As I’ve thought about the reasons why, I came up with the following reasons: 1. Writing code is an act of inventing. If what I’m trying to build already existed, I could just go buy it and save myself a lot of time and money. It doesn’t exist…

Sometimes I wished I was a baker or a carpenter.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#66

Post by jondubois » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

I've been coding intensively for more than half of my life from a young age - I'm approaching 16 years of experience now. Also, I've been doing it quite intensively (I was writing games when I was still in school before studying software engineering at university, then I worked for 14 different companies; some startups and some corporations in about 10 different industries. I've completed projects in at least 7 different programming languages). Also I've always been working on a side project during nights and weekends; mostly open source.

I have mixed feelings about the ceramics anecdote because I've met some people who have been coding a long time and producing large quanities of code but it's not good quality. To write high quality code, you need to enjoy the process and be adaptable. You need to have been exposed to a lot of different kinds of projects and management cultures.

Also, the most frustrating thing is that other people who are not good coders don't recognize straight away who is a good coder. Often, it takes a whole year to prove yourself. However, good coders usually know straight away who a good coder is.

Because of this effect, our industry is currently in a bad state. Many of the big popular tech stacks are mediocre compared to some of the alternatives that are available. There is a lot of misinformation and misplaced hype.

Most people who have the power to make hiring decisions are not sufficiently good at coding to be making those decisions. So good coders tend to find themselves smothered in most work environments...

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#67

Post by tasuki » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #49

mroche wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person with decades of practice have faced and failed at a dozen core cs problems. They’ll probably fail, but they can explain their state at any given moment. This is a pretty critical point in my opinion, but it also depends on the individuals drive. I personally put a distinction between programmer/scripter and computer scientist. One knows how to write code to get stuff done, the other knows some much deepe…

i'm confident i've hit an NP complete problem once. I don't remember the nitty gritty details, but it had something to do with optimal rendering of boxes on a screen. kinda like bin packing. I've been asked a few times, but this one stands out. usually, my spidey sense kicks in, and i inform my manager what they're asking is hard, like multiple people for years with no guarantee of success hard. Mostly, they cut the…

Did they really want optimal rendering of boxes? Would a "good enough" rendering of boxes be good enough to achieve whatever business goals?

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#68

Post by pdamoc » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

revskill wrote: post #7

I use one rule: If it's easy to remove, then it's fine. Because only then, i don't fear refactoring later. So i'll get my goal: Easy refactoring for fun and profit. Refactoring is often underrated. Actually i learnt more from refactoring rather than "just make it work perfectly since day 1.

If it's easy to remove, then you can think about the thing you can remove in isolation.

I think that the ability to partition code in such a way as to think about each bit in isolation is the mark of high quality code.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#69

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #67

jfoutz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm confident i've hit an NP complete problem once. I don't remember the nitty gritty details, but it had something to do with optimal rendering of boxes on a screen. kinda like bin packing. I've been asked a few times, but this one stands out. usually, my spidey sense kicks in, and i inform my manager what they're asking is hard, like multiple people for years with no guarantee of success hard. Mostly, they cut the…

Did they really want optimal rendering of boxes? Would a "good enough" rendering of boxes be good enough to achieve whatever business goals?

[deleted]

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#70

Post by MRD85 » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:47 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

Is Ronaldo 10x as likely to get a hat-trick to send his team forward in Champions League when they needed 3-0 to progress? He's not running 10x as far but he is so much better due to little things, such as being in the right spot at the right time.

Compare this to programming. A programmer who makes good decisions early on the project will likely save his company a lot of money down the line. A few poor decisions here will cost them a lot of money.