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Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

blog.stephenwyattbush.com

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Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#101

Post by hnfong »

mkl95 wrote: post #70
westoncb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd have nodded and read on a couple years ago when I'd only had thoughtful/well-informed/diversely-experienced developers review my code. I've learned since that it's also possible to have your code reviewed by someone without particularly deep understanding (nor awareness of what they lack), who would insist that responding to a critique of (what they think is) a problem is essentially being argumentative b…

> someone who has settled into a set of "correct" answers and now sees other people not adopting their personal outlook on code as a failure to learn. Real example #1: I warn John Doe that his new endpoint will crash in a specific scenario. John Doe dismisses the warning since "it's not likely to happen in the wild". QA call it out soon after it's uploaded to our test environment. The error has a chain effect where i…

Sounds pretty bad if they didn't have a reason to not take the fixes. But ... where's the tantrum though?

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#102

Post by hnfong »

mwattsun wrote: post #4

I've been familiar with the concept of egoless programming [1] since early in my career (mid 80's). I was drawn to it because I was also attracted to Eastern philosophies about minimizing your ego and identity to be more aware and in the moment (mediation, mindfulness). There was another idea that I was drawn to at the same time "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [2]. Egoless prog…

Meditation is a process that works to block all "external" stimuli so that one can focus on the "self"... not sure how that works with minimizing the ego?

Presumably the realization that "my code is not me" could be a connection to more spiritual realizations like "my ____ is not me", but still it's not exactly minimizing the ego in the usual sense.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#103

Post by Ntrails »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #97
Ntrails wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that. Someone is going to need to explain to me why focussing on being happy is a bad idea. My historic view was "I'd rather chase being content and comfortable" as it's less of a sugary high and more of a stable base. However - I do not think that is what is being said here?

What he means is to avoid making hedonism your only goal in life, but to have some goal beyond that...

I'm not sure that happiness == hedonism? I would contend that most people spend too much time and effort chasing eg "being an expert in field x" or "getting a job with consultancy k" because they mistakenly think it's a good thing in and of itself.

Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe our goals should be lofty and our own happiness tangential - but I don't buy it. If anything I think more people should think about things that make them happy, rather than focussing on abstract life goals that may or may not do that.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#104

Post by TOGoS »

Ntrails wrote: post #87
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In HN formatting you need newline for paragraph lists: 1. Be patient. No matter what. 2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him. 3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. 4. Expand your sense of the possible. 5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change. 6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deli…

> Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that. Someone is going to need to explain to me why focussing on being happy is a bad idea. My historic view was "I'd rather chase being content and comfortable" as it's less of a sugary high and more of a stable base. However - I do not think that is what is being said here?

Because happiness is not something you can 'have', it's something that happens. If you pursue happiness as a goal in itself, you may find that whatever you thought would give you happiness is not enough. On the other hand, if you have a mission and pursue that, you might not accomplish your mission, but happiness, or at least contentment that you are making progress, may happen in the process.

Related: "What is the meaning of existence? To stop searching for the meaning of existence" (paraphrased from somewhere).

I like Alan Watts' talk on 'discipline'[1]. tl;dr: "It's enormously important, especially for American people, to understand that there is absolutely no possibility of having any pleasure in life at all without skill."

[1] https://youtu.be/RNn1FB-Yn2M - put it in a background tab to avoid the silly graphics.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#105

Post by watwut »

tuyiown wrote: post #98
watwut wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reviewer suggested a change that would introduce an error, or something smelly - treat it as welcomed feedback, make sure to perfectly understand the seemingly subtle difference in approaches, and with a thorough explanation I used to do that. The team dynamic went wrong every time. I ended up being the one people picked on the most, complaining about things they had no issue other people to do. And half the time i…

Ok, I didn't meant to introducing unsolicited advice, more like illustration to make sure that leaving ego didn't meant anything about caring or not, but mostly _how_ you do express your carefulness, especially converting into a constructive loop. That being said, your default mode of conversion on this whole thread is confrontational, that facilitate self-cornering a lot, especially that leaving no open end in the c…

Two of my comments were purely expressing how I feel. Third one was tldr of my past experiences. Only the part under lines seems confronting, which is not that much and hardly a whole thread. I am really unsure about what corner I am supposed to lock myself in with these.

Also, it was repeated experience that has nothing to do with my current team. I am not in my first team and learned those lessons in the past ones.

And really, not every code review comment will improve you. Acknowledging that significant amount of them are pure preferences or even someone being wrong is not refusal to improve. And yet another category of them are half baked ideas. Just that, people give comments for variety of reasons and you have to manage them all.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#106

Post by skmurphy »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #53
yesenadam wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird isn't it! In a quick search, I couldn't find any occurrence online of the phrase "Don't rewrite code without consultation", one of those commandments, earlier than Atwood's article. This[0] was the earliest other one I could find, from a few months after Atwood's, which says "What Weinberg wrote in that book was a set of guidelines for developers working in a team environment to keep their egos separate…

An earlier article from techrepublic written in 2001: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/egoless-programming-the... This is the earliest google hit for "Ten Commandments for egoless programming". Curiously, the author, Lamont Adams, does not explicitly state that the commandments are from the book. Maybe "I present The (Almost) Ten Commandments for egoless programming" means that it's a summary by Adams?

Thanks this is an earlier online source. Adams credits Weinberg for the term "egoless programming" but it's clear the 9 commandments are his.

There is an updated version from builder.com in 2004 that adds a 10th commandment that matches the Atwood list see https://web.archive.org/web/20040603055200/http://builder.co...

(uncovered via http://blogs.ugidotnet.org/geniodelmale/archive/2006/01/03/3... )

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#107

Post by Ntrails »

TOGoS wrote: post #104
Ntrails wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that. Someone is going to need to explain to me why focussing on being happy is a bad idea. My historic view was "I'd rather chase being content and comfortable" as it's less of a sugary high and more of a stable base. However - I do not think that is what is being said here?

Because happiness is not something you can 'have', it's something that happens. If you pursue happiness as a goal in itself, you may find that whatever you thought would give you happiness is not enough. On the other hand, if you have a mission and pursue that, you might not accomplish your mission, but happiness, or at least contentment that you are making progress, may happen in the process. Related: "What is the m…

I think my argument runs counter to this. Stop chasing things you think might give you happiness/contentment in some long run, as though it is some intangible second order effect.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#108

Post by dgfitz »

Aeolun wrote: post #79
dgfitz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming is a very intimate experience. >The same as creating art. It is the manifestation of your thoughts and opinions, small and large, put out in to the world. I respectfully disagree. This thought process is why other people are left holding the bag at 11pm on a Friday fixing the 'art' of someone else. Computer Science is a derivative of mathematics. Math is not art. Math IS beautiful, explicitly because it…

Code exists on a continuum. It’s not correct or incorrect. It is better or worse. Unless you consider anything less than perfect to be wrong, but that’ll just make nobody want to work with you.

It’s not better or worse: it works or it doesn’t. Making something convoluted and “artistic” just makes it harder for the next dev to deal with.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#109

Post by michaelbrave »

Ntrails wrote: post #87
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In HN formatting you need newline for paragraph lists: 1. Be patient. No matter what. 2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him. 3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. 4. Expand your sense of the possible. 5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change. 6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deli…

> Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that. Someone is going to need to explain to me why focussing on being happy is a bad idea. My historic view was "I'd rather chase being content and comfortable" as it's less of a sugary high and more of a stable base. However - I do not think that is what is being said here?

it's been my life experience that trying to be happy is like grasping sand, the harder you try the more it eludes. While living with a purpose, or for the sake of others it seems to come naturally.

Re: Dad and the ten commandments of egoless programming (2012)

#110

Post by leetrout »

dgfitz wrote: post #108
Aeolun wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code exists on a continuum. It’s not correct or incorrect. It is better or worse. Unless you consider anything less than perfect to be wrong, but that’ll just make nobody want to work with you.

It’s not better or worse: it works or it doesn’t. Making something convoluted and “artistic” just makes it harder for the next dev to deal with.

No one said code needs to be artistic.

You have twisted my words.

I equated it to art as the physical manifestation of something that represents someone's mental imaging / modeling.

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