Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The worst programmer I know

dannorth.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 668 posts

Re: The worst programmer I know

#341

Post by shortrounddev2 »

kvirani wrote: post #337
Stratoscope wrote: post #304

Some 20 years ago, I worked at a moderately large software company that sold a desktop application for Mac and Windows. The team had mostly Mac experience and they were just getting their feet wet with Windows. So naturally the Windows version had some problems. At the time, I was known as a "Windows expert", so they hired me to help improve that version and help the team get more familiar with Windows programming. I…

I hope that feedback didn't discourage you from continuing with your approach to software development and teamwork.

I am the same way with my coworkers. I spend a lot of time helping juniors with their code and doing code review. My boss talked to me and told me to stop helping out so much and focus on my own tickets.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#342

Post by sodapopcan »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #204
psychphysic wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm rarely paired because pair programming just isn't something we do in the company outside of just helping people with their little issues. It's not an encouraged practice. There's nothing deep about it. It sounds like you're trying to insinuate something negative about me.

I assume they are insinuating that you are coming off as arrogant and only interested in teaching. They should definitely just say so, though.

In a good pairing environment everyone is learning from everyone. You didn't explicitly say you were looking to learn for others though you also didn't explicitly say you weren't. As far as I'm concerned, in the best pairing environments everyone is always pairing with everyone else, not just seniors with juniors. There is the idea that seniors can actually learn from juniors too since juniors will question things seniors haven't thought about in a long time and are living with "I do it like this because it's the way I've always done it" syndrome.

PS, love the username :)

Re: The worst programmer I know

#343

Post by kagevf »

hnfong wrote: post #199
adolph wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where the owner wanted the web service rewritten from scratch every 6 months so they could use the newest web framework and follow the current fashion This sounds like an improvement over the opposite, a code base that is rarely touched and uses eol frameworks. Software is a living thing and if you don’t act as a ruthless gardener you wind up a museum curator with 1990s DEC hardware running in the 2010’s. The right…

If you choose the right frameworks which have sufficient momentum to last you say 10 years, you don't have to put yourself in the dilemma. And yes, 10 years is quite possible these days. Besides the infamous Javascript framework churn, things are moving quite a bit slower in recent years.

> Besides the infamous Javascript framework churn

reactjs came out in 2013, so it meets the 10y metric, but it has some internal churn, such as classes, hooks, etc

Re: The worst programmer I know

#344

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #287
wonderwonder wrote: post #104

I worked at a company for a couple years where you had to produce 10 points a week or you got pipped. Didn't matter if you were a jr or sr. I worked on a few teams there and you could immediately tell how the teams measured points by the stress level of the developers. Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week…

> ...or broke it down into smaller achievable tickets that continuously added to their points totals. These teams were filled with happy stress free developers. But that is part of the point of scrum. To break down stories into consistently stress-free achievable stories, rather than big risky ones filled with unknowns. I'm not saying this was a good workplace, it doesn't sound like it at all. But to me, it sounds li…

[deleted]

Re: The worst programmer I know

#345

Post by ResearchCode »

fnimick wrote: post #134
wonderwonder wrote: post #104

I worked at a company for a couple years where you had to produce 10 points a week or you got pipped. Didn't matter if you were a jr or sr. I worked on a few teams there and you could immediately tell how the teams measured points by the stress level of the developers. Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week…

> Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week. So in the short term, the company benefited, yeah? They got more work out of the same people than they would have if they didn't apply the pressure. Reminds me of an old boss I had who would flat-out say that to get a project done we would "hire someone and burn the…

I don't think they did. If churning out low-quality code for 6 months was good project management, the Linux Foundation would be doing it.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#346

Post by bullen »

"ideally as tangible business impact expressed in dollars saved, generated, or protected"

Then exclude non-export numbers and divide that by the number of KWh used to generate that revenue.

Edit: Please comment on down vote, otherwise we learn NOTHING!

Re: The worst programmer I know

#347

Post by wonderwonder »

fnimick wrote: post #134
wonderwonder wrote: post #104

I worked at a company for a couple years where you had to produce 10 points a week or you got pipped. Didn't matter if you were a jr or sr. I worked on a few teams there and you could immediately tell how the teams measured points by the stress level of the developers. Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week…

> Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week. So in the short term, the company benefited, yeah? They got more work out of the same people than they would have if they didn't apply the pressure. Reminds me of an old boss I had who would flat-out say that to get a project done we would "hire someone and burn the…

"So in the short term, the company benefited, yeah" In hind sight, they did not. The company is publicly traded and recently sold itself for parts to avoid bankruptcy. They are in a very niche industry and are notorious for their production environment going down, and massive data corruption in their clients data set. There are worse things as well but I am trying to be at least a little anonymous here.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#348

Post by ironman1478 »

It's interesting reading this because this has been my role for a few years. I've also had similar problems with management wanting to pip me and things like that. Luckily, my company does peer review in addition to top down review and that has shown that I provide value even if it's not always coding.

I think the managers who don't understand this type of role are the ones who were largely mediocre engineers, but were able to get to that position regardless. They just don't understand the process of engineering and that's it's not just churning out tickets or doing the bare minimum if you're working on something non-trivial.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#349

Post by sound1 »

liquidpele wrote: post #308
avanai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most impressive thing about this story is that they figured out the answer . They did the research, and nailed down that it was Nyquist who was was the productivity booster. It’s the exact opposite of the OP’s story, where management tried to fire the Nyquist-equivalent.

All they figured out was that the smart people hung out together.

IMHO this is the right answer :)

Re: The worst programmer I know

#350

Post by rawgabbit »

raincom wrote: post #185
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #124

I wish I could pair program more. I have so much knowledge to give other members of my team. Domain knowledge, programming knowledge, common pitfalls, etc. You get a code review pass at the time of writing the code, and it means you have more opportunity to change things for the better. Once it's written there's not much appetite for drastically changing working code during code review unless there's a really good re…

In almost all companies, even seeking help is frowned upon. One ex-Microsoft manager, now a senior Manager at Atlassian, called that 'hand holding'. Some actively don't want to help out others, due to PIP/bonus culture. At Amazon, some team members explicitly give bad advice when asked for help. That's why we have this culture of "lone rockstars", who spend a lot of time to learn without being mentored.

Seeking help isn’t the problem. It is priorities. Usually the best developers are tasked with the more impactful tasks whose deadlines must be met at all costs. As a manager, I would view my task is to shield said developer from distractions so he can save my butt because my job is also on the line.
Post reply on HN