The Timeless Way of Programming
tomasp.net
The Timeless Way of Programming
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Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#2To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology.
It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#3To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology. It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
>Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
That's some really reductive moralism that does not take into account any external factors on why the bad code was written.
Do you really think you're a good person because you're code is good?
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#4To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology. It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
Meh. Such moral absolutism leaves no room for fate. I had a colleague once whose wife was dying of cancer and he understandably had severe trouble focusing on his work. That does not make him "bad people" even though his code wasn't perfect all of the time.
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#5There’s a certain class of programmer who seems to derive great pleasure in comparing programming to architecture. Maybe because architects are cool, or sound more grand than “programmer”. The author mentions Patterns of Software as profound, but in my experience it was mostly empty and contained only references to other work, without adding its own voice or perspective. At worst, it was pretentious and boring.
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#6To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology. It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
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Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#7To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology. It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
If I write some ugly code to get prod back online ASAP, did I immediately become a bad person? Or do I only become a bad person after some number of weeks passes and I haven't refactored it to clean it up yet?
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#8There’s a certain class of programmer who seems to derive great pleasure in comparing programming to architecture. Maybe because architects are cool, or sound more grand than “programmer”. The author mentions Patterns of Software as profound, but in my experience it was mostly empty and contained only references to other work, without adding its own voice or perspective. At worst, it was pretentious and boring.
I feel like people glamorize architecture in general. Sure the Empire State Building was probably fun to design, but 99.9% of architects are just designing bland office buildings or long hallways of apartment boxes. On average it's probably just as exciting as a software architect designing their 100th CRUD webapp.
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#9To me, tao of programming is not related to computer or technology. It's based on human character. Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt).
>Good people produce good code, or "timeless" code, bad people write "bad" code (means it's a tech debt). That's some really reductive moralism that does not take into account any external factors on why the bad code was written. Do you really think you're a good person because you're code is good?
> Do you really think you're a good person because you're code is good?
That’s a bit of putting the cart before the horse… what if they think they’re a bad person because their code is bad?
Re: The Timeless Way of Programming
#10There’s a certain class of programmer who seems to derive great pleasure in comparing programming to architecture. Maybe because architects are cool, or sound more grand than “programmer”. The author mentions Patterns of Software as profound, but in my experience it was mostly empty and contained only references to other work, without adding its own voice or perspective. At worst, it was pretentious and boring.
This is really misreading the whole concept of patterns in both architecture and software. The goal is not to somehow equate or even link the two disciplines. Instead it is to note that when you go about arranging stuff to do stuff (e.g materials to be buildings, or programming languages to be programs), it is likely that there will (over time) emerge ways of doing things (patterns) that you can (and likely should) use over and over again.
It's not architecture-envy, it's finding a parallel from a different discipline that applies to your own.