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Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

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Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#61

Post by marxisttemp »

lazystar wrote: post #11

amazon's internal build tool experiences this same phenomena. engineers are hired based on their leetcode ability; which means the average engineer has gaps in their infrastructure and config tool knowledge/skillset. until the industrys hiring practices shift, this trend will continue.

As an undergrad, I did group projects with people who quite literally could not compile and run any actual project on their system outside of a pre-packaged classwork assignment, who essentially could not code at all outside of data structure and algorithm problem sets, who got Google internships the next semester.

But they were definitely brighter than I when it came to such problem sets. I suppose we need both sorts of engineer to make great things

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#62

Post by Over2Chars »

KineticLensman wrote: post #59
Over2Chars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also "zero based budgeting" (ZBB) that starts from zero and says "justify everything".

Which in my experience sometimes involves copying last years justifications

It might!

But as I understand it and I am not an accountant (IANAA?), for non-ZBB budgets last years budget is usually used as a starting point and increases are justified.

"Here's why I need more money to do the same things as last year, plus more money if you want me to do anything extra".

I'd be curious what our man Le Cost Cutter Elon Musk does for budgeting?

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#63

Post by sandbach »

ruuda wrote: post #12

I think LaTeX is the poster child of this. Nobody writes a LaTeX preamble from scratch, you always copy your previous document and tweak it.

Don't do that! If you're always using the same preamble, you should turn it into a .sty file. Then the preamble of new documents is just

  \usepackage{myessay}

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#64

Post by huijzer »

mianos wrote: post #29

I have an alternate theory: about 10% of developers can actually start something from scratch because they truly understand how things work (not that they always do it, but they could if needed). Another 40% can get the daily job done by copying and pasting code from local sources, Stack Overflow, GitHub, or an LLM—while kinda knowing what’s going on. That leaves 50% who don’t really know much beyond a few LeetCode p…

> That leaves 50% who don’t really know much beyond a few LeetCode puzzles and have no real grasp of what they’re copying and pasting.

Small nuance: I think people often don’t know because they don’t have the time to figure it out. There are only so many battles you can fight during a day. For example if I’m a C++ programmer working on a ticket, how many layers of the stack should I know? For example, should I know how the CPU registers are called? And what should an AI researcher working always in Jupyter know? I completely encourage anyone to learn as much about the tools and stack as possible, but there is only so much time.

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#65

Post by internet_points »

ratmeadow wrote: post #7

At my work I've noticed another contributing factor: tools/systems that devs need to interact with at some point, but otherwise provide little perceived value to learn day-to-day. Example is build system and CI configuration. We absolutely need these but devs don't think they should be expected to deal with them day to day. CI is perceived as a system that should be "set and forget", like yeah we need it but really I…

Yeah, I think this is the real issue. Too many different tool types that need to interact, so you don't get a chance to get deep knowledge in any of them. If only every piece of software/CI/build/webapp/phone-app/OS was fully implemented in GNU make ;-) There's a tension between using the best tool for the job vs adding yet another tool/dependency.

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#69

Post by Loic »

mianos wrote: post #29

I have an alternate theory: about 10% of developers can actually start something from scratch because they truly understand how things work (not that they always do it, but they could if needed). Another 40% can get the daily job done by copying and pasting code from local sources, Stack Overflow, GitHub, or an LLM—while kinda knowing what’s going on. That leaves 50% who don’t really know much beyond a few LeetCode p…

I like Makefiles, but just for me. Each time I create a new personal project, I add a Makefile at the root, even if the only target is the most basic of the corresponding language. This is because I can't remember all the variations of all the languages and frameworks build "sequences". But "$ make" is easy.

Re: Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

#70

Post by f1shy »

mianos wrote: post #29

I have an alternate theory: about 10% of developers can actually start something from scratch because they truly understand how things work (not that they always do it, but they could if needed). Another 40% can get the daily job done by copying and pasting code from local sources, Stack Overflow, GitHub, or an LLM—while kinda knowing what’s going on. That leaves 50% who don’t really know much beyond a few LeetCode p…

I would just change the percentages, but is about as true as it gets.
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