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The 4-chan Go programmer

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Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#61

Post by layer8 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #11
_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

> I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" I once had to deal with a HTTP handler that called `Validate` on interface A which called `Validate` on interface B which called `Validate` on interface C which called `Validate` on interface D which finally did the actual work. There was a lot of profanity that month.

This can happen when some of the interface operations have added logic, but others (like Validate here) don't, so just get delegated as-is.

One typical example is a tower of wrapped streams, where each layer applies additional transformations to the streamed data, but the Close operation is just passed across all layers to the lowest one (which closes the underlying file or whatever).

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#63

Post by nickpeterson »

Dansvidania wrote: post #60
yarg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse (this isn't too much of an exaggeration): https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris... . Sometimes there's a scary lack of understanding and competency where you'd expect to find it. As an undergrad, I once spent about half an hour peer programming with a computer science PhD - it was enlightening. He didn't have the slightest understanding of software - calling me out for things like…

the fizzbuzz repo hurt. It is oh so true though. I often wonder if, unbeknownst to me, I am writing similarly over-complicated software. People seem to be unable to tell, so I doubt I can either. It makes me second-guess my code a lot. Is there any reliable/objective/quantitative way to evaluate such a thing? The repo is a great example of what not to do, but it's so extreme it's hardly useful in practice.. (nor it s…

Just delete some code and see if it still works. Bonus points if you can delete abstractions.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#64

Post by dlisboa »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #22
_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

The coder spectrum, scientists on one end, software engineers on the other. Only balance can save us. I have read code used in research papers. The theoretical math usually goes beyond my comprehension, so I always dive into the code to better understand the logic, only to find... it's way worse... unintelligible. At the end of the day we are used to what we do, and anything different will be foreign to us.

A lot of the code written in math, physics or data analysis settings is really written for the authors alone to understand. They benefit from tens of pages of documentation (papers) plus decades of previous experience from the readers. None of which commercial software systems have.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#65

Post by THBC »

stroupwaffle wrote: post #57
_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

I think something people forget is that computer programming is a craft which must be honed. A lot of people are introduced to it because computers are such an important part of every discipline, but unfortunately the wealth of mistakes maintaining many a code base occur from those who, quite honestly, simply lack experience. In the authors case, they don’t explain the simple understanding that every pointer is simpl…

”every pointer is simply adding a dimension to the data.”

No, it’s not. The concept of having a pointer to a pointer has nothing to do with the concept of dimensionality.

You must be thinking of lists of lists (of lists…), which can be implemented using pointers. The dimensionality, however, comes from the structure of the list, not from the pointers.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#66

Post by astrange »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

This is a popular pattern in apps or other "frameworky" code, especially in C++.

I can think of at least two open source C++ apps I used where every time I checked in the IRC channel, the main dev wasn't talking about new app features, but about how to adopt even newer cooler C++ abstractions in the existing code. With the general result that if you want to know how some algorithm backing a feature works, you can't find it.

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#67

Post by nickpeterson »

agency wrote: post #45
binary132 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine allowing invalid values to exist

imagine enforcing invariants as part of the design of a software system

The nerve, taking good jobs away from young qa testers. Wait till the IT Union hears of this!

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#68

Post by sweeter »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

A lot of people suffer from the tendency to do a lot of pre-abstraction. They also split everything up way to much without needing to

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#69

Post by stonemetal12 »

_yb2s wrote: post #7

As a scientist that ends up working closely with actual professional software engineers... lots of the stuff they do looks like this do me, and I can't for the life of me make sense of why you'd do it. I have seen a single line of code passed through 4 "interface functions" before it is called that call each other sequentially, and are of course in separate files in separate folders. It makes reading the code to figu…

It is the Law of Demeter. It sounds like a good idea, until you get the chain of wrappers.

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

Re: The 4-chan Go programmer

#70

Post by kurisufag »

HideousKojima wrote: post #17
Lucasoato wrote: post #5

There is a Go developer that defends using channels four times like in this blog, he also made some great medium posts in which he details real use cases. His name is Christopher, if you want to find more about him, just Google “chris chan 4chan”.

Not to be confused with (current? former?) Google employee Christopher Poole, but I guess that's a moot point at this point.

former. he's a free man.
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