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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

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Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#31

Post by hkwerf »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

There is more than one type of people who stress over code style. There's the group who wants to discuss about how to style your code and then there's the group who wants to just use a common code formatter and be done with that.

For example, I have objections to rustfmt's default style. I would never start discussions on rust projects about changing that to another formatter or changing its configuration. I definitely would carefully ask that people should really use rustfmt, though, if they don't do so yet.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#32

Post by mattacular »

I strongly agree with almost all of this except the last part about project managers - a good one is invaluable, an ok one can still be helpful. The majority probably are neither (and their ability to be good at managing projects depends a lot on other org functions - not necessarily within their control) but way better than 90%+ that the author suggests.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#33

Post by OJFord »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

It's not even more or less, it's just about different aspects. Consider a woodworker obsessing over sharp chisels - they don't all care beyond 'sharpish', or about the tools used to do so - but to some that's hugely important and how they are then able to do their best work.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#34

Post by Tade0 »

lbj wrote: post #23

I actually disagree with about half of this. > Typed languages are essential on teams with mixed experience levels Essential, meaning 'cannot exist without', it's not. I've seen this work a number of places. > Blind devotion to functional is dumb. Managing/limiting state is always a worthwhile pursuit. I'd think he would agree since he seems to value simplicity > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or o…

Regarding code style etc. I get where he's coming from as plenty of people made entire careers on pursuing the perfect linter configuration. They're a net negative in every project.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#35

Post by xnorswap »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

The solution is to have computers enforce the code style. Pick a linter, pick a set of rules, and then forget about them.

Things I beleive:

- If you're picking up on code-style in PRs then your toolchain is backward.

- If you're changing linting rules every month then you're focussed on the wrong things

- It's better to have a consistent style than a perfect style

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#36

Post by Kenji »

Kototama wrote: post #11

> Typed languages are essential on teams with mixed experience levels I like this one because it puts this endless dilemma in a human context. Most discussions are technical (static typing ease refactoring and safety, dynamic typing is easier to learn and better for interactive programming etc.) and ignore the users, the programmers.

[dead]

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#37

Post by samsartor »

cies wrote: post #6

> Gradual, dependently typed languages are the future I really interested why the author thinks this. I've seen the general sentiment wrt "the future" go from C to C++ to Java to Ruby to JS (also server-side) and Python. My own sentiment went from Ruby to Haskell to, well, Kotlin I guess... I looked into Idris (dependently typed), but did not think it would fit the Overton window[1], to be a reasonable expectation fo…

Dependent typing is mainly just that feature of Typescript that `x: number | null` becomes just `x: number` inside an `if (x != null) { ... }` statement.

If you dig deeper into the type theory, it gets really interesting and complicated because types themselves can start to include any arbitrary code. And that's where Idris comes in! But after doing a whole project on Idris in college, I agree it is way outside the overturn window. Python and typescript rightfully keep it simple.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#38

Post by gorjusborg »

No, objects aren't generally 'good', unless you think keeping multiple state machines in sync is 'good'.

OO is not evil, but it also shouldn't be your default solution to everything.

Also, who is this person? I immediately distrust someone who calls themselves 'a pretty cool guy'. That's for the rest of us to decide.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#39

Post by jajko »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

Not really. Obsessing over breaking lines after famous 80 chars in Eclipse was, is and will be idiotic to be polite. Surprisingly large amount of people were obsessed by this long after we got much bigger screens, if that was ever an argument (it wasn't for me). 2 spaces vs 4 spaces or tab. Cases like these were not that rare, even though now it seems better. That's not productive focus of one's (or team's) energy and a proper waste of money for employer/customer, it brings 0 added value to products apart form polishing ego of specific individual.

Folks who care about the craft obsess (well within realm of being realistic) more about architecture, good use of design patterns, using good modern toolset (but not bleeding edge), not building monolithic spaghetti monster that can't evolve much further, avoiding quick hacks that end up being hard to remove and work with over time and so on.

If you don't see a difference between those groups, I don't think you understood author's points.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#40

Post by WJW »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

There's a correlation-is-not-causation issue here. Yes, most very good developers pay a lot of attention to details, as well as to the bigger picture. But there are a lot of mediocre to downright bad developers who think that paying a lot of attention to code style, linting rules and other minutia will make them better developers.
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