Software development topics I've changed my mind on

Post by 9rx » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #163

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…

If you want to compare to artisans - they were stressing about details that customers see, details that customers don’t see were to cut corners on. Making fuss about indentation in code file is not artisanal. It is insane weirdo if we are charitable and if not clueless and childish.

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

whstl wrote: post #85

CrimsonRain wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functional code is more chained and need more space often. Descriptive names are better; tends to be longer. Buy ultrawide. 80 is for aholes who like to use small laptop and then force it on everyone else. 120/150 is reasonable. 200 is great.

Yep. And the laptop excuse is not even valid, I used a 11" MacBook Air for 10 years and even back then 80 always felt extremely limiting for me. I just tested and: even when zooming +1 on VSCode and leaving the minimap open I can fit 140 chars without any horizontal scroll. People demanding 80 columns always have some crazy setups, like an IDE where the editor is just a minuscule square in the centre, like an Osbourn…

Post by DarkPlayer » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #77

hliyan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another way to look at this: if you consider the school of thought that says that the code is the design, and compilation is the construction process, then stressing over code style is equivalent to stressing over the formatting and conventions of the blueprint (to use a civil engineering metaphor), instead of stressing over load bearing, material costs and utility of the space. I'm fond of saying that anythi…

> the formatting and conventions of the blueprint Some of those formatting conventions are written in blood. The clarity of a blueprint is a big deal when people are using it to convey safety critical information. I don’t think code formatting rises anywhere close to that level, but it’s also trying to reduce cognitive load which is a big deal in software development. Nobody wants to look at multiple lines concatenat…

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #161

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…

Iterative work is THE way to work in large legacy codebases. The minute you wade into the code, all of your planning is moot. You don't know what's lurking below the surface. No one knows what's lurking under the surface. Except maybe Dave, because he vaguely remembers about 15 years back talking to some guy who wrote some code 30 years back about it. Greenfield, absolutely design up front you lucky devils, but itera…

Post by whstl » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #223

whstl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. And the laptop excuse is not even valid, I used a 11" MacBook Air for 10 years and even back then 80 always felt extremely limiting for me. I just tested and: even when zooming +1 on VSCode and leaving the minimap open I can fit 140 chars without any horizontal scroll. People demanding 80 columns always have some crazy setups, like an IDE where the editor is just a minuscule square in the centre, like an Osbourn…

Try saying that again when you are 50 and your eyes no longer as good as they used to be. Back when I was 25 I loved the tiny fonts I could fit on my (then incredibly large) 19 inch monitor which I had pushed to the highest resolution. These days even with special computer glasses (magnification and optimized for computer distance) I can't make such tiny text. Now get off my lawn you punks!