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Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

addyosmani.com

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Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#121

Post by JonChesterfield »

cookiengineer wrote: post #92
jiggawatts wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By linking to those examples you confirmed the point you were trying to refute. From my personal perspective this is mediocre code at best. It’s written in an unsafe language. Littered with macros, which in C are not hygienic and are land mines in waiting. Constants defined with lowercase and not actually marked as const. Double underscores everywhere, which are the bad alternative to namespaces seen in weak language…

I think I just fell in love with you. Finally a sane person Honestly, I never understood why so many developers abbreviate function names or variables. Is it so much pain to type abc for auto completion? Why not simply name fd file_descriptor? Short names are a mental barrier and a level of abstraction that can easily be avoided.

Information density matters.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#122

Post by mattgreenrocks »

After almost 20 years of writing the best code I can muster as much as I can, I’ve come to understand that most people won’t ever really appreciate it for the effort you put in. Many won’t even notice; they’re too preoccupied with their own lives to open their eyes to what is there. Nor do they give a damn about mastery. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a waste.

I don’t think I’d do much differently in retrospect, except be far more cautious about where and who I spend time around.

Even this very thread has some pretty bad vibes: “who can say what good code is?” “good code can’t exist with deadlines.”

I feel really bad for junior/intermediate devs that read this stuff and internalize it.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#124

Post by 38 »

imoverclocked wrote: post #100
38 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

> the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does Do you have a source on what I have managed to write or is this just guessing and calling it "fact?"

pot: kettle you are black!

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#126

Post by Gigachad »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #122

After almost 20 years of writing the best code I can muster as much as I can, I’ve come to understand that most people won’t ever really appreciate it for the effort you put in. Many won’t even notice; they’re too preoccupied with their own lives to open their eyes to what is there. Nor do they give a damn about mastery. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a waste. I don’t think I’d do much differently in retrospect, except…

Usually the situation is someone has meticulously crafted some perfect system which can be extended and reused in many coherent ways. And then that person leaves the company and no one else truly understands how it works or was meant to be used so it gets a series of hacks and patches applied to it which violate the original design which is known by no one at the company. For most projects this is not that big of a deal, the component gradually becomes less coherent and the original requirements change so much that one day someone will decide that the whole thing will be rewritten from scratch.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#127

Post by JonChesterfield »

Sometimes I go to change code to do a new thing and it is easy to do. The new cases fit in, the existing system doesn't explode, all is good.

Sometimes the code is beautifully factored and tested. Maybe even documented. It then proceeds to fight against the new change. Maybe the type invariants fail everywhere for reasons that price spurious. Maybe code far away makes dubious assumptions and breaks in response. In the worst case, it's beautiful nonsense held up by undefined behaviour and the language has come to collect the tax.

I like code that can be changed to do new stuff without everything around it exploding. That's probably what I'd call good code. It's in the context of tolerating future requirements well as the future is now.

I do not see such code often.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#128

Post by thumbuddy »

Gigachad wrote: post #126
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #122

After almost 20 years of writing the best code I can muster as much as I can, I’ve come to understand that most people won’t ever really appreciate it for the effort you put in. Many won’t even notice; they’re too preoccupied with their own lives to open their eyes to what is there. Nor do they give a damn about mastery. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a waste. I don’t think I’d do much differently in retrospect, except…

Usually the situation is someone has meticulously crafted some perfect system which can be extended and reused in many coherent ways. And then that person leaves the company and no one else truly understands how it works or was meant to be used so it gets a series of hacks and patches applied to it which violate the original design which is known by no one at the company. For most projects this is not that big of a d…

And this is why Go lang exists... The trade off is screw brilliant engineering just make it simple so other people can build on it easily. Not saying it's my favorite, but it has it's merits long term.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#129

Post by 38 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #90
38 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

By linking to those examples you confirmed the point you were trying to refute. From my personal perspective this is mediocre code at best. It’s written in an unsafe language. Littered with macros, which in C are not hygienic and are land mines in waiting. Constants defined with lowercase and not actually marked as const. Double underscores everywhere, which are the bad alternative to namespaces seen in weak language…

> It’s written in an unsafe language.

it seems you didn't bother to read the entire comment, otherwise you would've seen I linked to TWO different programming languages.

Re: Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it

#130

Post by michaelsalim »

jiggawatts wrote: post #90
38 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as good code definitely not true. this is good code: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/file.c this is good code: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/strconv/atoc.go its formatted, commented, direct. the fact that you struggle with writing time tested code does not mean that everyone does.

By linking to those examples you confirmed the point you were trying to refute. From my personal perspective this is mediocre code at best. It’s written in an unsafe language. Littered with macros, which in C are not hygienic and are land mines in waiting. Constants defined with lowercase and not actually marked as const. Double underscores everywhere, which are the bad alternative to namespaces seen in weak language…

Personally I don't think that's what makes a code "good". All code will get out of date with time. As with everything in this world. Doesn't mean that they are not good. My old gas stove doesn't have the bells and whistles that newer ones does. But it was a really good engineered product that have lasted for decades. It's really well documented so it's easy to do maintenance. It's also well understood by people.

Many people will say that an induction stove is better in safety, convenience and many more. But a gas stove still has its own place.

Just because the kernel code doesn't use the latest "best practices" doesn't mean it's bad. It could be due to many reasons from performance, compatibility, etc. Software is so easy to update anyway compared to other things that I'd bet there's more "good" software than "good" anything else.

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