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Who wrote this shit?

heltweg.org

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Re: Who wrote this shit?

#81
post #4

My favourite is when you're a solopreneur working in your own repos and still asking yourself "who wrote this shit?!"

I'm not a solopreneur but instead a corporate drone, and every time I git-blame questionable code, it's mine. But like others have said, if you're not embarrassed of something you wrote a year ago, that's not good.

I am usually embarrassed by my code of five minutes ago, but someone has to write it.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#82
post #19
post #4

My favourite is when you're a solopreneur working in your own repos and still asking yourself "who wrote this shit?!"

I heard a saying once: "all developers should be embarrassed about code they wrote more than a year ago" as a (cheeky) measure of ongoing growth and development. :-)

Interestingly, I recently looked back at an old disk drive with my first "real" unfinished side-project which I started as a teen learning to code.

And, to my surprise, it was not _that_ bad.

Sure, it was full of naively implemented stuff that could have been implemented way better. But, even a decade and a half after, it was pretty clear to read, and it was decently organized.

And, in some ways, I preferred this code to the one I'm writing professionally. I was honestly prouder of myself as a teen than myself as a professional programmer.

The difference, I think, is that I had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve for this project to be considered as definitely finished. Since I started working on code (for money) I've always been working on never ending projects. This industry (and me, as a professional) is obsessed in writing code for long term maintenance and evolution instead of effectively finishing products.

So, to get back on topic, I'm not sure you really write better code with time. I mean, yes, you totally do, but it's not as important as learning how to code for others to be able to understand and modify it with constraints you can't even imagine.

And I saw a lot of people writing super nice open source side project and then, when you work with them on some professional level, well, they still write the same shitty code as everyone else.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#83
I'm pretty sure the guy maintaining my code I wrote in my first (well, every...) job would get irritated at the style. Man, I can't even look at those trash now. I had the same expectations for other senior devs at my company when I started my new job and thought "why would they write such convoluted stuff?". Months later, I was writing similar code because I now know better.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#84
post #4

My favourite is when you're a solopreneur working in your own repos and still asking yourself "who wrote this shit?!"

After about 20 years of doing this (not particularly as a solopreneur), I understood the following: I sucked really bad yesterday compared to today and today I'm sucking so much more than I will tomorrow. And it makes me really happy that I can still say this. The moment I won't be able to say this anymore, is the moment I'm done and I can finally die.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#85
I wonder about folks who get upset about “Who wrote this shit?”

Do they never read their own code?

Or maybe they never see their own code?

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#86

Feel like there has been increasingly more cuss / inappropriate words showing up on top page of HN. I recommend HN to my kids. Not that they are not exposed to these words online but I would rather not come this from their parent. Not sure how to feel.

This is kind of an odd viewpoint.

Whether we spell "shit" or "s**t", you say the same word in your head.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#88
This is a good mind set to cultivate, but then I remember working on non-legacy projects.

My current project was started in the middle of 2021. The same people have been working on it for 6 months. I've been working on a related project and shifted over at the beginning of the year. I know the constraints and there haven't been deadlines.

The staff engineer decided to pick technology by what's cool. They haven't invested in development workflows. The infrastructure is held together manually by those who have admin access. Subsystems that need to communicate don't.

I have much sympathy for legacy projects, but those projects got to where they are because people made poor decisions. My current project is well on it's way to being a legacy project in just 6 months.

The team I'm on today doesn't say no to requirements and scope creep. They are too invested in tech and aren't adjusting. They don't cultivate truth about how parts of the project aren't coming together.

I blame problems on leadership much more than I do on individual contributors. I wish the commit log included the tech lead and managers on the project when code was written.

Re: Who wrote this shit?

#90
One of my first jobs while in college was working on adding features to a VB6 application using .NET 2.0 interop. The developer who wrote the majority of the VB code passed away from cancer a couple years prior. There were many times where I would stop and think "who the hell would write this?", and then pause to reflect that the code I'm complaining about was likely written while in a completely different mindset & battles I had no idea about. That shut me up pretty quickly. We're human after all, and humans have many flaws.
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