Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#141

Post by wrenky » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

redsymbol wrote: post #80

All the time. The old joke is about us looking at code we wrote six months ago, and being horrified at what we see. And I've had more than my share of that. But what's ALSO happened, many times, is I look at old code I wrote... and I'm IMPRESSED. Just blown away by the beautiful elegance and power of the abstractions I came up with, the sheer intelligence of the approach, the insight and lucidity oozing from the code…

I have several pieces of code from 5+ years ago that I have zero idea how they work or how I came up with that approach.

Its proof that past me was much smarter than present me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#142

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#143

Post by space_ghost » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #97

Everyone's talking about code, but I do this with carpentry. Right now, I'm working as a trim carpenter in residential construction, and I pride myself on doing as good a job as I can. As a result, when I come back to a job to install door hardware after everything is painted, I sometimes just wander around the house and admire my work. Especially tricky details that took a bit of thinking to get right, even if no-on…

I wish you'd done the trim work in my new house, then. Seems like these guys did it as quickly as they possibly could and then did their best RoadRunner impression.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#144

Post by dehrmann » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #97

Everyone's talking about code, but I do this with carpentry. Right now, I'm working as a trim carpenter in residential construction, and I pride myself on doing as good a job as I can. As a result, when I come back to a job to install door hardware after everything is painted, I sometimes just wander around the house and admire my work. Especially tricky details that took a bit of thinking to get right, even if no-on…

How does one find a trim carpenter (or any skilled tradesman) who has this level of attention to detail? There's definitely two tiers of work, someone who cares and work good enough for a rental unit, and you have no idea what you're going to get until it's done.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#145

Post by nategri » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

I've got a big text file of 6502 machine code I wrote a few years back that I pull out and marvel at from time to time. One of those things that you have to be fully in the "zone" to pull off, so it seems like magic to present-day me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#146

Post by cs702 » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

Yes, but only with a fairly small share of the code I've written in the past. Most of the code I've written is nowhere near as good as it could be; some of it is embarrassing.

By the way, for me this happens with all forms of creative/original endeavors, not just with coding: Sometimes I read and admire passages I wrote in clear, lucid English in the past. Sometimes I look at and admire mathematical equations I wrote in the past (even if I'm no longer as well-acquainted with them as when they were fresh in my mind). Sometimes I look at and admire diagrams I sketched in the past, e.g., for a research project.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#147

Post by deepspace » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

Way back, when Paul Graham first wrote "A plan for Spam", I was so intrigued upon first reading the article, that I jumped straight into coding.

I happened to be hosting my own mail server at the time, and I had previously implemented a crude spam filter, but the important part is that all my emails were already stored in a database and (crudely) classified as spam or ham, so I had a corpus available for training the classifier.

I spent a couple of hours in 'the zone', and wrote a Bayesian email classifier plus all the database management needed in a few hundred lines of C. The program compiled the first time - a first for me - and worked correctly the first time - another first. It did help that I had been heads-down in a complex project written in C for several months at that time, so my knowledge of the language and good design- and implementation practices were at an all time high.

That same program managed my spam pretty much unaltered for several years, until I switched to a commercial email host. Every few years, I still dig up that code as an example of good design and implementation.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#148

Post by kec » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

If you don't occasionally go back to appreciate what you've built, you're probably not taking enough pride in your work.

If you don't occasionally go back and become horribly embarrassed at what you've done you're probably calcifying.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#149

Post by tootie » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

Once or twice. I still remember a Perl routine I wrote probably 10 years ago. It's maybe 10-12 lines long, but what I remember is that I wrote the entire routine in one continuous train of thought, ran it and it worked on the first try.

Re: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

#150

Post by elliottkember » Fri, May 08, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

I wrote a GPS coordinate mapping tool for a fun project once. I wrote it on a train, and I didn't have the device that was going to use it. I sent them the link and they said it worked perfectly. I doubt the code was very good, but we just used the first version for the project.