I'm presently repairing a project that violates nearly every one of these principles. Literally, it's like they had a checklist made from this post and went down it to ensure they did everything wrong.
Signs that you are a bad programmer
21–30 of 177 posts
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#22> "Bulldozer code" that gives the appearance of refactoring by breaking out chunks into subroutines, but that are impossible to reuse in another context (very high cohesion) I feel like this might give people the wrong idea. Surely some amount of cohesion is desirable. Also, I'm not quite sure how one "gives the appearance of refactoring" without actually refactoring. Whether it's useful or not may enter into it, but…
I find this is one of the things I struggle with the most. I definitely "refactor" code by moving it to a subroutine sometimes purely for readability's sake. I also try not to stress out about how reusable something might be until I actually NEED to reuse it. Otherwise it often seems like "premature optimization" trying to generalize a routine that I'm not even sure will ever get used anywhere else.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#23I paused for a bit when I read, "A programmer can't acquire this kind of knowledge without slowing down." It seems that many businesses that rely on programmers are unwilling to give them the time to be better. I have seen coders with CS degrees from top-tier schools believe that they couldn't code anymore when placed in environments that do not mentor them, that treat them as horses to be run until their backs break…
I'm in this position now. I'm not a great developer, and I love learning new tricks, but because I'm billed hourly, am constantly interrupted, and get brought in to useless meetings, I'm left with zero time to learn.
The other problem with this is that you never have the opportunity to improve the business, either. Often, management wants the rank and file to improve processes ("because they know them best") but it's hard to find the time for that when you're already working full time (and more) on your deliverables.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#24My first thought was, "wow, infogami is still up?" I guess I left it in a good state. :)
Looking at the homepage, it says that the most popular pages were converted into static form, and now they're trying to sell the domain.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#25> "Bulldozer code" that gives the appearance of refactoring by breaking out chunks into subroutines, but that are impossible to reuse in another context (very high cohesion) I feel like this might give people the wrong idea. Surely some amount of cohesion is desirable. Also, I'm not quite sure how one "gives the appearance of refactoring" without actually refactoring. Whether it's useful or not may enter into it, but…
I find this is one of the things I struggle with the most. I definitely "refactor" code by moving it to a subroutine sometimes purely for readability's sake. I also try not to stress out about how reusable something might be until I actually NEED to reuse it. Otherwise it often seems like "premature optimization" trying to generalize a routine that I'm not even sure will ever get used anywhere else.
In my experience, the drive to make things reusable from the start ends up delaying projects to a point where they might just not get done.
I also refactor for the sake of readability (and urge my co-workers to do the same). Of course, this might mean I'm a bad programmer and I shouldn't ever get 6 levels deep in logic in the first place...
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#26my ruleset is much more liberal signs that you are a good coder: you enjoy coding, you enjoy a good piece of code signs that you are a bad coder: you don't enjoy coding, you can not appreciate beautiful code if you enjoy coding it jut doesnt matter if anyone else thinks that your code sucks. you will get better. if you hate your job (programming) then you code stinks and will get worse. in my careere i went from good…
How long have you worked as a professional software developer? Have you ever worked at a large company? There are plenty of people with a decade of experience who enjoy writing code who are just bad at it. Some of these people work on software that is much more important than Facebook.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#27"You seriously consider malice to be a reason why the compiler rejects your program" Of course it's malice.
I agree, most of these are hilarious!
But seriously, until programmers are paid $100/hour or given royalties, deal with the result of bad programmers...
... or do it yourself!
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#28A sign that I found missing from the list: you are totally devoted to a particular programming language and believe it's a silver bullet. All good programmers that I know understand that languages are just tools and all have tradeoffs of some sort.
I'm pretty sure I saw the "everything is a nail" type listed, which might well cover the folks that think Technology A is the be-all and end-all.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#29To me, everything in that article can be addressed with a little experience.
My one indicator that someone is going to be a bad programmer actually has little to do with technical skill sets, but rather personality. As my sanity check, I make sure to examine the open-mindedness (willingness to research and use unfamiliar tools) of programmers. More often than not, you find programmers who are very comfortable in given languages, environments, tools etc, but once you take away their comfort blanket, they keep reaching back for it.
An extreme example would be a scenario such that a programmer who knows C very well decides to do a decent amount of parsing in C instead of researching better languages for the job such as python or perl.
Re: Signs that you are a bad programmer
#30I'm a student in the third year of my CS degree and I constantly worry about not being a good programmer. There's things on that list I need to work on.