I've been working with one junior and one not so junior programmer on a hobby project recently, and they are both "Right Way Guys". For a roughly 300 LOC project with a discord bot and some rust code that only we will be running for now, they insisted on complete documentation, separate VMs for QA and "prod", systemd deployments, a templating system for a few strings, an ORM layer for four (4) SQL queries.. this is a…
I had to realize that for people like this the "Right Way" is the hobby, not the Discord bot.
This is exactly it. It's fun to try out the new tools and how "effortless" they make it. It's a kind of tinkering.
> But also don't worry too hard about getting "tricked" or learning "the wrong thing". Did I learn TDD when it was hip? Yes. Do I use TDD? No. But did TDD teach me how to write better code? Yes. Same with languages I've learnt but not ended up using professionally. Everything teaches you something. You can't find a good middle ground without stepping a bit too far in both directions.
I think we all do a bit of TDD, just not the extreme kind. If you already have the code and now you're trying to extend it, thinking about how this is going to be done and writing a few tests around the usage makes sense. It also makes sense if you don't have the code but you do have a way to structure the code in your mind and you can figure out what parts you can build and test first. So while it's not TDD in the p…
TAD has just about the right sound, too. I've found it's a useful tool for very specific tasks. I found TDD perfect for writing functions or modules with a wide variety of possible state-dependent outputs. While not strictly TDD, I've also found it helpful to sit down and frame a list of desired behaviors for a piece of code as expectations first, then go through the process of writing the code and tests in tandem. It's nice when you know exactly what you need to do, but not how to do it. It's much less helpful when you know the how but not exactly what.
That completely removes a whole slew of useless comments when people are reviewing code, it's such an amazing win, every single language should have it's styleguide published and a tool that forces it without any options.
This often leads to extremely annoying codebase because languages trying to enforce styleguides without proper options just leads to inconsistency once any code in another language leads to the codebase. Just have an options file which is checked in with the code and enforce whatever is set in there works much better. You still avoids all the useless discussions about formatting while also allowing to set sensible se…
Not sure I understand this. Do you mean tools like "go fmt" are going to try to format your Java code?
> 8. Take walks. I'm fortunate enough to have an office overlooking a small pond. When I'm frustrated I go to my window and stare at the pond for a while. When I'm really frustrated I walk down to the pond and stare at it for a while. I also walk to lunch as often as I can (i.e. when it's not freezing or boiling outside). Highly recommend.
When you’re really REALLY frustrated, do you go into the pond and stare at it from the inside?
I'm such a fan of the debugging book[1] recommended in the article that I bought a bunch of copies to give out. I've given copies to friends, interns, data scientists and even executives, and everybody who's read it has appreciated it. The book has a small number of simple techniques that are great for solving problems in any large technical systems, so it's useful for almost everybody. It's also an easy and engaging…
that's great, do you still have any to give out? i don't usually read books but i am trying to take it up lol. this may be a good way to staryt
The first item is also why it's good to be skeptical about things you learn on video sharing services like YouTube too. If you sound credible and present your ideas in a professional way, people will take them seriously regardless of how flawed they might be. In a world where a fair few 'essayists' have been exposed for just reading Wikipedia articles and Reddit posts, it's definitely good to try and not associate ho…
This comment just made me consider LLMs as similar to the essayists you mentioned - they read the "right" answer somewhere on the internet/during training and then can regurgitate it in a way that makes sense without consideration of how true it is in practice.
Not even the right answer much of the time, just information that sorta matches the right patterns as requested by the user. But LLMs say things in such an authorative, intelligent seeming way that it's indeed easy to forget they have no idea what they're actually saying or how accurate it is at all...
In the movie Primer, a group of four friends start a small computer business on the side. Two of them later invent a sci-fi box and then dramatic shenanigans ensue. Something I missed at first [1] was the significance of an event that happens early in the movie. They need to buy a $50 router because their existing one is broken. They have an impromptu meeting where one of the characters gives suggestions on how they…
Had a conversation with a friend yesterday about a case [1] where students at Oxford spent 500 years swearing irreconciliation with a guy from the 1200s as a part of their graduation vows. When it was reviewed in the 1600s, someone suggested removing the clause, but it was turned down. Rules and traditions have reasons, but it is interesting to think about how many we follow all the time without really understanding…
There was a moment when the cultural equivalent to genes was called memes
Very good article and I hope more people read it. Over my career of 15 years in software (data management), I have learned exactly that. One other thing that really helped me was something that I learned in my Theravada Buddhist upbringing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesamutti_Sutta > The Kesamutti Sutta states (Pali expression in parentheses):[5] Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing (anussava…
I have a hard time understanding what you mean by that, could you put it in simpler terms?
This comment just made me consider LLMs as similar to the essayists you mentioned - they read the "right" answer somewhere on the internet/during training and then can regurgitate it in a way that makes sense without consideration of how true it is in practice.
Humans were hallucinating responses given a prompt long before LLMs were a thing. Just look at any comment thread.
Certainly! It's generally considered a negative trait for LLMs to hallucinate but to say a writer is doing the same thing is kind of just implying they are a bad writer with a surface level understanding of their topic. I believe it's the confident delivery that's the issue, or the improper logical synthesis of ideas because they "seem" to be related.