The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up • Hacker News Board

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#51

Post by ilovecaching » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

Our industry is woefully ignorant of human psychology. We also invest very little in understanding qualitative improvements in software systems - as engineers we don't like anything we can't readily measure.

Anyone familiar with the magical number seven knows that systems need to be simple not for the sake of the computers, but for the sake of the people who work on it. As much as we like to think of ourselves as geniuses, at the end of the day we're animals with a finite amount of brain power. We cannot grasp large complex systems, and we need compartmentalization and simplicity so we can keep building on top of what we already have.

Maybe one day the computers will take over programming for us, but that day isn't today.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#52

Post by rdiddly » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

Hmm, point taken. And yet, legibility is itself valuable and efficient too.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#53

Post by pizzaparty2 » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

Sorry but there's no excuse for crap code. If it's hard to understand then time is lost every time you have to work with it.

You shouldn't defend it by trying to assign positive attributes to it (its effecient. ...yeah). Maybe there's nothing good about bad code and we should use being called out on it as an opportunity for improvement.

No, lets double down on our delusions of superiority by telling ourselves that crap we wrote is somehow effecient in some way.

Im tired of it. Its not effecient. Its bad and you should feel bad.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#54

Post by dionian » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

pizzaparty2 wrote: post #53

Sorry but there's no excuse for crap code. If it's hard to understand then time is lost every time you have to work with it. You shouldn't defend it by trying to assign positive attributes to it (its effecient. ...yeah). Maybe there's nothing good about bad code and we should use being called out on it as an opportunity for improvement. No, lets double down on our delusions of superiority by telling ourselves that cr…

Often true, but often 'beautiful code' does not impact the bottom line - even in the long term.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#55

Post by WesternStar » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

Does it follow from this that while you could train a large machine learning program to do a task then separating it from a monolith into separable parts would be highly unlikely to be successful? For example,you could train an algorithm that does object identification and then train an algorithm that does object boundary identification considering only the red value in a given photo from the original large program. However if you start with the components of an object identifier you might not be able to reach SOA or at least those two methods would look very different.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#56

Post by afpx » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

dionian wrote: post #54

pizzaparty2 wrote: post #53

Sorry but there's no excuse for crap code. If it's hard to understand then time is lost every time you have to work with it. You shouldn't defend it by trying to assign positive attributes to it (its effecient. ...yeah). Maybe there's nothing good about bad code and we should use being called out on it as an opportunity for improvement. No, lets double down on our delusions of superiority by telling ourselves that cr…

Often true, but often 'beautiful code' does not impact the bottom line - even in the long term.

It does if it’s a requirement for keeping employees from quitting.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#57

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

pizzaparty2 wrote: post #53

Sorry but there's no excuse for crap code. If it's hard to understand then time is lost every time you have to work with it. You shouldn't defend it by trying to assign positive attributes to it (its effecient. ...yeah). Maybe there's nothing good about bad code and we should use being called out on it as an opportunity for improvement. No, lets double down on our delusions of superiority by telling ourselves that cr…

When applying this article to code, I don't think it has anything to do with spaghetti being good. It could be viewed instead as an argument against "architecture astronautics", the "15 layers of abstraction to print 'hello world'" school of software design.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#58

Post by pizzaparty2 » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

dionian wrote: post #54

pizzaparty2 wrote: post #53

Sorry but there's no excuse for crap code. If it's hard to understand then time is lost every time you have to work with it. You shouldn't defend it by trying to assign positive attributes to it (its effecient. ...yeah). Maybe there's nothing good about bad code and we should use being called out on it as an opportunity for improvement. No, lets double down on our delusions of superiority by telling ourselves that cr…

Often true, but often 'beautiful code' does not impact the bottom line - even in the long term.

I agree, beautiful code is often the other extreme. Plus it's often only beautiful to the person that wrote it.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#59

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

rini17 wrote: post #48

foobiekr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a large size corporation but one which is a quarter the size of many fortune 100s. I guarantee you almost no one knows how things work or are done beyond their immediate scope. Much of my life is spent just trying to glean an understanding of some adjacent function or trying to convince people above me that things they believe about how things work are not actually reflective of how they actually work. A R…

Maybe that's how Musk's ventures are different - he knows how everything in his corporation works?

I think the primary difference is that for Musk, his companies are actual means to a non-monetary end (electrification of transport, Mars colonization). This creates a tremendous levels of focus. Most companies exist to make money for their owners, and any actual useful work done is only a side effect.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#60

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #6

I once cleaned up my sister's room. I thought I was doing her a favor but she was mad at me for a week! In hindsight I should have known better. Spacial memory and all that, she knew where everything was even though it looked messy. The article is not talking about the kind of tidiness that is the hallmark of a well-run workshop, IMO. That kind of tidiness is part of what makes more efficiency in that context.

I've been mad at my parents plenty of times for cleaning up my room as a kid for the same reason - even though it might have looked like a mess, everything naturally ended up in the most obvious place for me; a kind of mind-environment feedback loop setting on an equilibrium.