Forget about CCP (don't confuse it with Chinese Communist Party). Mr. Nicolici just wants you to download his unfinished "Dr. Programming" booklet.
Cargo cult programming (2020)
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#22[deleted]
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#23... that's it? That's the article?
Books are not inherently superior, especially given how easy it is to self publish. And a surprisingly small number of them (in my experience) are actually both up to date and deal with architecture in any meaningful way.
I'm all for making sure you understand what you build, which seems to be what the article is trying to say, but never discount blogs from reputable sources. They tend to be on the bleeding edge of software architecture, and under the right circumstances offer an edge over published sources.
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#24I guess I do a lot of cargo cult programming by the metrics in the article: if someone approaches me and demands a detailed explanation of the design principles involved in some minor function I wrote months ago, plus a list of the programming books I consulted (printed books -- no online resources, please!), I will probably score poorly in "eloquence" since I'll just be standing there slack-jawed and bewildered.
Who remembers their sources anyway? Once you learn a concept or a principle, the source of that knowledge fades away pretty fast while the concept remains.
Though if you do copy some code blindly from Stackoverflow, it might be a good idea to include a comment linking to the answer you got it from.
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#25Asserting for no reason but unvarnished elitism that books are the only valid form of knowledge transfer, while also accusing people of blindly following advice they don't understand, is *chef's kiss*.
I'm not sure that this author knows what "Cargo culting" is. It does not mean being unable to explain in detail every motivating factor of every piece of a complex system. It means including structures that aren't necessary because you don't know if they're necessary or not.
"cargo cult programming" is entirely contained within the concept of "Deep Magic". There always comes a time when you must use a system that you don't fully understand, and so you rely on the understanding of others to figure out what to do.
That's how expertise is supposed to work, it's a good thing. If everybody could fully understand every concept at all levels of complexity, nobody would need to specialize. Applying expertise incorrectly is a bad thing, but for the most part not that harmful.
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who remembers their sources anyway? Once you learn a concept or a principle, the source of that knowledge fades away pretty fast while the concept remains.
Though if you do copy some code blindly from Stackoverflow, it might be a good idea to include a comment linking to the answer you got it from.
I tend to use my commit messages for things like this.
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#27Cargo culting is basically doing something you don't understand, hoping that it'll accomplish your goals. Following this person's advice to not learn from blogs and articles, and instead only learn from books, sounds like cargo culting to me. The source of the information doesn't matter. What matters is learning new concepts, knowing how to apply them, and understanding the reasons for applying them. You can learn th…
Exactly. You can just as easily learn cargo cult programming from a book. Design Patterns anyone?
I mean, they're great when applied correctly, but someone looking specifically to apply design patterns will often end up CCPing.
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#28> What you need to hear is books and good authors (e.g. Kent Beck, Robert C. Martin, Martin Fowler, Michael Feathers and many more). A former coworker is obsessed with some of these authors, particularly with the concept of clean architecture. It doesn't seem that bad until you read the Java-looking Python monstrosities he writes.
Yeah, dogmatically following the teachings of one of these "prophets" (e.g. Uncle Bob's "Clean Code" bible) can also be a cult. And if you don't really understand why you're doing it, it's some kind of cargo cult too...
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#29FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition comes to mind: https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...
Re: Cargo cult programming (2020)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though if you do copy some code blindly from Stackoverflow, it might be a good idea to include a comment linking to the answer you got it from.
I tend to use my commit messages for things like this.
The advantage of having it in a comment vs in a commit message is that the source is immediately available to another developer browsing the code. Otherwise they will have to use git blame (or equivalent) to see why you did it that way.