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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

#271

Post by asa400 »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #242
ghc wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reduce your argument to its essence, you're saying typesetting is part of the craft of writing. I've yet to meet an author who believes this (other than enjoying editing their own work as output from a typewriter), and I think the same broadly applies to code. It's not that everyone thinks these things are unimportant, it's that caring deeply about doing them a particular way is orthogonal to the craft. It's somet…

More than one writer refuses to use a computer, preferring typewriters. Harlan Ellison learned how to repair typewriters after he could no longer find anyone to fix his. Stephen King wrote Dreamcatcher with a fountain pen. Authors totally obsess over details that seem irrelevant to people outside that craft.

And that’s totally fine! But there is no correlation whatsoever between writing on a typewriter or using a fountain pen (or the physical experience of writing generally) and the quality of the writing. None.

There is nothing to support this in either writing or programming, at all. For every software craftsman out there obsessing over formatting, editor layout, linters, line length, there is an ancient, horrifyingly laid out C codebase that expertly runs and captures the essence of its domain, serves real traffic and makes real money.

Make your editor work how you like, but if my team lead started to get annoyed after my 4th formatting-only PR I should probably start to think about what I want them to bring up to my manager in my performance review.

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

#272

Post by 9rx »

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.

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

With Smalltalk and Objective-C both being effectively dead at this point, that really only leaves Ruby (and arguably Erlang) as the only languages that are able to express OO. And neither of those languages are terribly popular either. Chances are it won't be your default solution, even if you want it to be.

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

#273

Post by baq »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #255
baq wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adding it to your own function signature This is precisely why they are so bad: checked exceptions must not be allowed to be used outside the package (or jar, or whatever, just limit it) otherwise they cause non-local build failures in all dependencies. They're fine if you are developing the artifact that's going to be deployed.

I think that’s more of a problem of changing the function signature. Not specific to checked exceptions.

What's specific in checked exceptions is that if you don't handle or silently ignore the new exception, you must change the signature. Then your callers must do the same thing. Then their callers etc. sometimes right down to your public static void main.

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

#274

Post by do_not_redeem »

GuB-42 wrote: post #151

Just personal opinions, I guess, I agree with most, but here are some I disagree with: - There is no pride in managing or understanding complexity Complexity exists, you can't make it go away, managing it and understanding it is the only thing you can do. Simple systems only displace complexity. - Java is a great language because it's boring That is if you write Java the boring way. A lot of Java code (looking at you…

> time++; // increment time

This isn't too many comments, it's a poor quality comment. Try:

time++; // advance 1 simulated second

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

#275

Post by The_Colonel »

pinoy420 wrote: post #261
The_Colonel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just needed some syntactic sugar to help redirect certain developers into less self-destructive ways of procrastinating on proper error handling. Syntactic sugar it needs is an easy way (like ! prefix) to turn it to a runtime exception. Procrastinating on exceptions is usually the correct thing to do in your typical business application - crash the current business transaction, log the error, return error resp…

How many errors are actually recoverable. I bet most thrown exceptions could be replaced with a printf(“it went wrong here”) for all their utility.

Well, usually you want to handle it at some level - e.g. a common REST exception handler returning a standard 500 response with some details about what went wrong. Or retry the process (sometimes the errors may be intermittent)

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

#276

Post by bluGill »

wesselbindt wrote: post #156
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.

I'm kind of wondering where the "mixed experience levels" part comes from. What is it about more homogeneously skilled teams that makes them less susceptible to the productivity boost that statically typed languages give in large code bases?

> What is it about more homogeneously skilled teams

They are a strawman example that doesn't exist in the real world.

Companies will be in big trouble in a few years when the team retires, people find new jobs, someone dies... All of them mean that a homogeneously skilled team will exist for at most a few years if you have one. As a company you need to ensure you have a program to train in new people.

I have long believed that when someone retires you should replace them with someone fresh out of school, promoting people all the way down to fill the opening. If someone finds a new job you can replace them with someone else with similar experience, but when someone retires they should be replaced by someone you already have groomed for the job.

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

#277

Post by whstl »

dtquad wrote: post #168

>Frontend development is a nightmare world of Kafkaesque awfulness I no longer enjoy As a backend/systems engineer I recently had to look at a React + Typescript + MobX app from 2019/2020. It is true that that some things, especially the webpack config and Typescript loading, were outdated but the overall design and architecture of the app was still understandable and modern. With some help from ChatGPT it took very…

5-10 years ago I was just skipping Webpack and Babel, and raw-dogging React.createElement in personal projects in order to be happy and maintain sanity. At work I would just push hard for alternatives like Parcel or Brunch.

Now, with Vite I just don't mind the toolchain anymore, it just helps me instead of getting in the way. Similar to Go.

All the problems I have now are of my own creation.

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

#278

Post by jghn »

phailhaus wrote: post #262
dtquad wrote: post #168

>Frontend development is a nightmare world of Kafkaesque awfulness I no longer enjoy As a backend/systems engineer I recently had to look at a React + Typescript + MobX app from 2019/2020. It is true that that some things, especially the webpack config and Typescript loading, were outdated but the overall design and architecture of the app was still understandable and modern. With some help from ChatGPT it took very…

Yeah I wonder if his experience is mostly using JavaScript, which is absolutely impossible to maintain at scale. Most of my team comes from primarily backend-dev roles and they've all grown to love TypeScript over Python.

Both of his blogs mention Java at least once. It's a good bet this factors heavily in his day to day.
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