Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer • Hacker News Board

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#341

Post by beat » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

munmaek wrote: post #274

pdpi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wasn't entirely clear on that bit :) There absolutely is plenty of room for a word more specific than "problem-solver". But our choice of words matters — words carry nuance. In some ways I'd consider "software engineer" as equivalent to "novelist" or "journalist" where "programmer" maps to "writer" and "coder" corresponds to "typist". Software engineer, novelist, journalist all encapsulate a lot of responsibi…

I actually go the opposite route; I hate calling myself an engineer, because that word actually carries weight due to older, more established professions. The tech/software industry wants the prestige of that title without the work and effort that goes into it. We are not engineers. We have no standardized certification process or tests. We have no (or very little) accountability. We have no codes of ethics. We may o…

I think of myself as an "engineer", but more in the "keep the steam engine from exploding" sense.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#342

Post by whatever_dude » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #15

Admittedly, my first days as a junior programmer were before some of you were born, but I'm thinking of a particular format here... Learned as junior: If you report an OS bug or some other deep problem, seniors will not believe you and assume you're making excuses for your own bugs and lack of understanding. Understood as senior: If a junior programmer tells me they found a system-level bug, I won't believe them and…

> Understood as senior: Communication skills matter most.

I've been of a similar opinion at some point, but now that I see people _optimizing for communication_ as juniors in lieu of actual technical skills, I say: both matter a ton. I hate dealing with a junior that is an extremely good people person but a terrible developer: they tend to think they got everything covered just because people like them so much, even when their actual solutions are terrible.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#343

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

snicky wrote: post #187

enobrev wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> code that I wrote myself is hard to read This has happened more times than it probably should: 1. Arrive upon some code I wrote at some point in the near or distant past. 2. Review it to get some idea of what I was trying to do 3. Laugh at my young self for being so naive 4. Refactor or Rewrite 5. Re-realize the edge-cases and difficulties 6. Remember this being a problem 7. Refactor And Rewrite 8. Either `git rese…

Semi-related story of mine: 1. Stumble upon some specific problem with a web framework we use. 2. Jump straight to stackoverflow. 3. Sbd had a similar issue, nice. 4. Sbd wrote a very concise answer, nice too. 5. There's my nickname under the answer. Oh, wait...

THANK YOU!!!

I really thought this only happened to me :-)

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#344

Post by beat » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #310

reymus wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - early exits to hell that can only be fixed by rewriting What do you mean by that?

if (a) { do_something(); return; } else if (b) { do_something(); if (something_else() == -1) { return; } } do_other_things(); maybe_exit_here(); maybe_keep_going(); it has similarity to frequent `goto label` type of coding

GOTO return(); is the droid you're looking for. :)

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#345

Post by airnomad » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

bluejellybean wrote: post #263

airnomad wrote: post #38

Developers are new factory workers. Pay is good now because industry is expanding and there's not enough of us but it won't be like that forever. And bottom line work is already being commoditized (WordPress ecosystem etc).

From a hiring perspective, the problem is, and will continue to be, the quality of each worker. Although there are a handful of similarities between how the two professions operate, I think that it is unwise to make the factory worker connotation. The entire idea of a factory worker is that they can be swapped in place by another and the output is maintained to a great extent. This just simply isn't the case in softw…

That's because our tools are not good enough so what we lack in tools we compensate by individual developer quality.

I spend a lot of time within WordPress ecosystem and I've seen people coming to me with 20K products shops they've built and maintain without a single line of code written.

I've seen companies operating online without having any developments either on contract or in house.

Because for certain simpler scenarios, there's UI based tools you can run your business on.

Sure they come to me because eventually they need something they can't do with tools they use but those are becoming more and more high level jobs.

Web development is pretty much figured out problem. You have legions of repleacable low value developers churning out pages and you have subset of highly paid specialists who can do more advanced things.

But those gazillions web pages are doing their job, they drive sales, improving information quality etc. so I could say digital workers are factory workers of our time.

On certain jobs line is blurry - designers can do basic WordPress but they also can set up MailChimp because machine needs to be humming.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#346

Post by jdsully » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

tomsmeding wrote: post #227

taneq wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seniors [...] complain about the low quality of junior code [...] their own code from 6 months ago. What classes as 'senior' that their own coding style has changed that much in 6 months? O.o > I still do write "cool code", for code that I will only use myself that doesn't go into production. But for all others, I write easy-to-read code. Good dev. Remember, you are not your audience. Unless you're just writing pla…

> > seniors [...] complain about the low quality of junior code [...] their own code from 6 months ago. > What classes as 'senior' that their own coding style has changed that much in 6 months? O.o Your code style can remain exactly the same, and it would still happen. The reason is not that you would write the code differently today, but that you forgot the issues and edge cases that made you write it like that then…

Here we get to the real heart of the problem. Engineers of all levels seem to default into “this code is shit - I could do better” instead of having some empathy and considering they don’t have the whole picture.

But the wrong lesson seems to be taken away from this. It’s not that all code is shit - it’s that you aren’t good at reading the code yet if you can’t see all the little hairs and bug fixes.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#347

Post by nikanj » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #205

dahart wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh this is such a good comment! > Legacy code that I wrote myself is hard to read. Sometimes I don’t even recognize me as the author for a while. Realizing I’m reading something I wrote and can’t understand it without studying carefully has been rather surprising and reminds me of the old Kernighan quote “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as…

> the old Kernighan quote “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?” This quote can be interpreted in an intelligence-positive way, to encourage you to learn by writing the cleverest possible code. Then, when you get to debug it, you will be forced to improve your skills. This interpretat…

”Prod is on fire and nobody can figure out your burrito pasta”

”Isn’t this a wonderful learning opportunity for all of us”

Debugging time is never a good time to start honing new skills.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#348

Post by cja23 » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #259

beat wrote: post #15

Admittedly, my first days as a junior programmer were before some of you were born, but I'm thinking of a particular format here... Learned as junior: If you report an OS bug or some other deep problem, seniors will not believe you and assume you're making excuses for your own bugs and lack of understanding. Understood as senior: If a junior programmer tells me they found a system-level bug, I won't believe them and…

> Understood as senior: If a junior programmer tells me they found a system-level bug, I won't believe them and will tell them to go figure out what's wrong with their code. Me: 'Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while'

Horses, not zebras. But yes, there are a few zebras in the world also.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#349

Post by reificator » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

vharuck wrote: post #309

Gibbon1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write notes to my future self all the time. Meta comment: This is bullshit and has problems with this that and the other thing. But to fix that I'd have to refactor this other module and I'm not going to do that now. And the other thing I'm drawing a blank. Meta comment2: I don't think the code needs to do this here. But I can't prove it right now. Meta comment3: We absolutely need to do this exactly as it is. Beca…

> Meta comment: This is bullshit I used to worry about putting emotional blurbs in comments or commit messages, but I'm starting to see their value. A commit that starts "This ugly writing is to appease Roger, the editor obsessed with AP style" lets me know three things: - Who asked for the change - The source of the content - The fact I disagree but still do it, so future me doesn't pick fights present me avoided Of…

That's less about emotion and more about context, which absolutely is important to capture. Links to tracking systems, and in more dysfunctional environments, quotes from emails and water cooler conversations can help a lot when going back in time. Generally I put those in the commit message whenever it makes sense, but sometimes it's better to put it in the actual comments themselves.

On the other hand, on the rare occasion that I've commented or committed something based on emotions, I've always regretted it. Granted they never caused problems for me, just a source of internal embarrassment. Still a good enough reason to be thoughtful about what emotions you express.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#350

Post by beat » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

rafiki6 wrote: post #285

docker_up wrote: post #67

Overall a good article, but I completely disagree with the notion that "good enough is good enough". I've been in a lot of code reviews where developers push back because it's "good enough". You need to maintain a defined level of quality otherwise codebases go to shit very, very fast. I was recently told in a code review that a Cassandra read before a write (to ensure there were no duplicates) was "good enough" beca…

I'm going to challenge you here (admittedly without full context, but to make a point). It sounds to me like the problem you're describing requires a database has ACID transactions which is not Cassandra. Therefore Cassandra is a poor choice and in my view that is poor engineering. This being said, I'd err on the side of agreeing with the developer who determined that they are not capable of writing code that guarant…

That was my thought, too. If you need ACID transactions, use an ACID database. There are rather a lot of them. And then mirror the data out to Cassandra after the fact, if you need it there. Ironically, Cassandra may not be the source of truth!

Way back in the stone age, MySQL did not yet have ACID transactions. They got them about the same time they stopped bragging about how much faster they were than Oracle, but I digress. Anyway, I had to write a bunch of transactional code around it. Drove the dba and me nuts. We begged for Sybase (we both knew it well), but the startup CTO was an open source purist and hated his first contact with the Sybase sales machine.

Eventually they folded, and the point was moot.