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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

#141

Post by latexr »

Insanity wrote: post #128
gorjusborg wrote: post #38

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.

I had a different read of that point. More along the lines of “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” (might have butchered that saying?). I’m also more in the FP camp - even wrote a book on the topic of FP. But I also acknowledge OO is not inherently a bad choice for a project, and many languages nowadays do exist along a spectrum of OO and FP rather than being strictly one of the other. To me a benefit for O…

> More along the lines of “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” (might have butchered that saying?).

No, you got it right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_throw_the_baby_out_with_...

> even wrote a book on the topic of FP.

Care to share? If not, that’s fine.

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

#142

Post by lr4444lr »

jajko wrote: post #39
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 an…

Preach!

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

#143

Post by magicmicah85 »

imjonse wrote: post #56

> ORMs are the devil in all languages and all implementations. Just write the damn SQL It depends on what you're writing. I've seen enough projects writing raw SQL because of aversion to ORMs being bogged down in reinventing a lot of what ORMs offer. Like with other choices it is too often a premature optimization (for perf or DX) and a sign of prioritizing a sense of craftsmanship at the expense of the deliverables…

It’s the devil I know and for most of my projects I’ll likely never forsake ORM for raw SQL.

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

#144

Post by The_Colonel »

pgsandstrom wrote: post #16

> Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written I'd rephrase this to something like: Most programming should be done before 5% of the code is written. Because "no plan survives contact with the enemy". I often develop a plan, work for just a tiny bit, and realize some new constraints. It's after that point that you should construct your grand battle plan.

I've made an opposite progression from the op. I was a strong believer of upfront design, but now value iterative approach as you do.

For the first try, hack together something working, you'll learn things along the way, validate/disprove your assumptions. Iterating on this will often bring you to a good solution. Sometimes you find out that your current approach is untenable, go back to the whiteboard and figure out something different.

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

#146

Post by chasd00 »

OJFord wrote: post #33
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.

To take it further some woodworkers are really tool hobbyists. They obsess over the tools and never really touch the wood they’re supposedly working. Same goes for software devs, I think about this when reading threads obsessing over AWS services, pipelines, build stacks, instead of writing software.

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

#147

Post by marifjeren »

olalonde wrote: post #145

It feels like the author is in the middle of the bell curve meme[0], especially with regards to "most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written". [0] https://i.imgflip.com/8tw3vb.png

This is an extremely lazy critique

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

#148

Post by rixed »

kaapipo wrote: post #125
Terr_ wrote: post #2

> Java is a great language because it's boring [...] Types are assertions we make about the world This is less of a mind-was-changed case and more just controversial, but... Checked Exceptions were a fundamentally good idea. They just needed some syntactic sugar to help redirect certain developers into less self-destructive ways of procrastinating on proper error handling. In brief for non-Java folks: Checked Excepti…

Nah, I think having a monadic Maybe/Option type and first-class support for it is the correct solution. Exceptions are fundamentally flawed.

"None" to represent any type of failure sounds similarly fundamentally flawed too.

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

#149

Post by bjourne »

xnorswap wrote: post #35
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

While Python has some great linters, I don't know of any in C that can correctly and automatically enforce some coding style. Most of them can only indent correctly, but they can't break up long lines over multiple lines, format array literals, or strings. Few or none knows how to deal with names or preprocessor macros.

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

#150

Post by gmm1990 »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #82

> Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written Nah. I (16+ years developer) prefer to iteratively go between coding and designing. It happens way too often that when you're coding, you stumble across something that makes you go "oh f me, that would NEVER work", which forces you to approach a problem entirely differently. Quite often you also have eureka moments with better solutions th…

I assume there are people who are able to have those eureka moments before writing any code. I definitely write a lot of code before figuring out the final design but always think I should be designing more.
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