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The worst programmer I know

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Re: The worst programmer I know

#521

Post by alex_lav »

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…

> 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.

Maybe as-written but not really ever as-practiced.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#522

Post by dymk »

hannofcart wrote: post #520
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…

> Some 20 years ago... I called "house calls": visiting other developers' offices... Ah, the good ol early 2000s, where devs had "offices" or "cubicles" to themselves.

Now I have a whole house with two offices, just for me!

Re: The worst programmer I know

#523

Post by alex_lav »

jen20 wrote: post #473
wizerdrobe wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some firms simply hire nothing but Seniors. You trained up a Junior-Mid-Senior? Cool, well offer him 20k more and call it a day.

> Some firms simply hire nothing but Seniors The firms that claim to do that almost invariably do not hire people with 20 years of experience, they hire people with 2 years of experience 10 times over. Sometimes that's fine. Usually it's not.

This seems like nothing more than a desire to gatekeep experience? Being employed as a programmer means you're gaining experience...Even if you work at a single company for 20 years, you're not going to get some mythical competence that you could only get by staying in one area. This line of thinking seems like nonsense.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#524

Post by artichokeheart »

> A few years ago I wrote a Twitter/X thread about the best programmer I know, which I should write up as a blog post

Given that the thread is no longer visible without an account. They might want to do that sooner than later if they want people to actually read it

Re: The worst programmer I know

#525

Post by jacquesm »

WalterBright wrote: post #516
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…

> a few months later > Which was exactly what I thought they had hired me for! It's good to regularly update your manager with what you're doing and accomplishing, as they may not realize it at all.

Then you have to wonder why they're there in the first place. Managers that do not manage and do not know what the people they are supposed to be managing are up to can be missed.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#526

Post by gajomi »

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…

PSA... check out this guy's LinkedIn profile. It's a great read.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#527

Post by jacquesm »

Strilanc wrote: post #180
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.

Honestly, I'm kind of skeptical of the answer. I'm not saying that talking with Nyquist wouldn't be useful, probably it was, but what's stopping a dozen other things at least that useful from being part of the answer?

> I'm not saying that talking with Nyquist wouldn't be useful

No, you probably shouldn't be saying that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency

> but what's stopping a dozen other things at least that useful from being part of the answer?

Because someone needs to act, and that's exactly what Nyquist did, in a very unobtrusive and non-confrontational manner.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#528

Post by Stratoscope »

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…

Just a quick note to thank everyone for your thoughtful and insightful comments here.

As it is a holiday weekend, I may not be able to get back to every reply right away.

I am grateful that zdw's submission and my comment led to such an interesting discussion! Thank you all.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#529

Post by lawn »

mattlondon wrote: post #182

Personally I want the seniors on my team actually delivering on the really hard stuff. Helping juniors do their job is great and all, but you still need experienced people to work on the hard and complex stuff that juniors can't because they don't have the knowledge/experience/people-skills. No amount of pair programming can replace that. You don't want to be in a situation where you have really really well implement…

One of the points of the post is that this person also helped the seniors do their job better.

But yeah, the job of every senior cannot be to only help the juniors.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#530

Post by foolfoolz »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #382
foolfoolz wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this post is really strange because it actually describes a good environment - code isn’t changing in code review except for really good reasons - people who need help are reaching out - projects that need help get additional help brought in what else are you looking for? this example is about as pair programming as it gets at most places. they’re called silos when people don’t like them and layers of abstraction oth…

I don't think code reviews are the _best_ way to teach. Because for a start, you're usually working with a complete task. Someone can have a perfectly fine pull request that implements the feature or solves the bug, but it might not be the best way of going about it. Now, as a reviewer your spidey sense tingles and you get the feeling there's a better way. But now it's significantly more effort to pull that change ap…

> But now it's significantly more effort to pull that change apart or start from scratch and experiment with a new approach, then write this all up on the pull request with the caveat "but what you've written works, so in the interest of time we can merge this"

this is your issue. you’re approving prs due to perceived time constraints that you wish you could say no to. are these time constraints real? even for significant prs of 1-2k lines responding to a comment of rewrite another way only takes 1-2 days. code review isn’t about finding the best solution. it’s the best solution given the current trade offs. things to ask yourself are

- are the time constraints real?

- does the team agree on the “right” way?

if there’s time constraints sure i get it. these are external commitments. public deadlines. it’s hard to ask for additional work like this. but in my experience these are rare. usually management is smart enough to avoid external deadlines

does the team agree this is the right way? are you pushing your own narrative? if it’s a team strategy, it’s very easy to tell people to rewrite an entire pr for. if it’s your opinion but you can defend it, make your case, and if it’s strong you can still get someone to write it. is this so bad it’s going to be rewritten soon?

> the more senior members of the team are off delivering important projects and not having the capacity to imbue their knowledge onto the less experienced members of the team

i thought you were saying you are this senior engineer?

i don’t get this. you want to spend more time helping people but think it’s uncomfortable to be on a call with someone for 2 hours getting through a problem. you want to pair program and feel this way about a shared coding session? i’ve spent literally 7 hours on zoom screen shares. if you’re actually helping people they appreciate it

you say the culture isn’t there to support this but then list examples of good places you could create this culture and choose not to

if you truly are this smarter, better engineer that should spend all your time helping your team, why aren’t you doing these things on your own?

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