I would add filing bugs as "going to the source". I've worked with many developers who have spent hours trying random combinations of keystrokes before asking for help from a colleague, let alone filing a bug with a project.
The best programmers I know
181–190 of 320 posts
Re: The best programmers I know
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Read the Reference >> Don’t Guess > I find that, when working with a new "thing," I often like to guess for about an hour or so before I really do a deep dive into the reference. Or, I'll read a stackoverflow answer or two, play around with it, and then go to reference. I think that's fair. I've definitely seen "not best" programmers only guess and only read stackoverflow, over and over, forever, and never read th…
The trouble is that there is a strong correlation between being able to design good interfaces and being able to prepare good documentation. Meaning, where guessing fails, the reference is bound to also fail due to inaccuracies or failing to communicate what you need to know. Which stands to reason as both require concern for how the user perceives the product. That is a skill in its own right. In practice, so many t…
> The trouble is that there is a strong correlation between being able to design good interfaces and being able to prepare good documentation. Meaning, where guessing fails, the reference is bound to also fail due to inaccuracies or failing to communicate what you need to know. Which stands to reason as both require concern for how the user perceives the product.
I think we're talking about different kinds of guessing. I'm not talking about skilled educated guessing, I'm talking about dumb, ignorant guessing. Like "I don't know anything, so I'm just going to try "stuff" I find online without really understanding. Those people do that even with the most beautiful interfaces with the best documentation.
But even with the best designed interfaces, not everything is discoverable (e.g. another fantastically designed but orthogonal interface in the same library that solves your problem).
Re: The best programmers I know
#183[flagged]
Re: The best programmers I know
#184For those unable to open the link due to owner site being hit by Cloudflare limit, here's a link to web archive - https://web.archive.org/web/20250409082704/https://endler.de...
There's some irony, is there not, in presuming to be able to identify "the best programmers" when you've created a programming blog that completely falls down when it gets significant web traffic?
Most developers are terrible at system administration which is quite disappointing and is one of the reason that the author uses Clownflare. Being able to maintain systems is as important as writing code
Re: The best programmers I know
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a hard take, just because we all build on stacks. When we trust that Math.Abs() is going to work in some language, or that some socket library is going to do what it says on the tin, we're standing on the shoulders of giants. I also avoid frameworks as much as possible, but by frameworks I mean anything I'd rather roll myself in a scripting language, particularly when learning and keeping up with the framewor…
Moment.js is one of those libraries to avoid; the bloat....
I still like Moment because it offers better control of time zones that aren’t the browsers time zone when compared to the builtin Date APIs.
Do you have a recommendation to replace Moment for that use case?
I’m hopeful for the future with JavaScript Temporal.
Re: The best programmers I know
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I tend to Google instead of chatgpt everything. I always end up finding these little interesting nuggets in comments/threads in SO
I think my preferred LLM usage style these days is to try something on my own, and then get the LLM to critique what I did. I think it's both better for learning (just like learning natural languages, it's better for learning to make a mistake and be corrected than it is to look up the right answer each time), and also I think the stakes are lower since you're not relying on the LLM to not hallucinate. You can also l…
Makes sense. I learnt swift recently with LLM as my first starting point - basically "I know java and python, explain swift syntax". It was great.
Once I got to architecture I got a general direction and relied on googling (eg. Lots of nuance to if I should use swiftData/coreData/sqlite etc found in conversation threads)
Re: The best programmers I know
#187I want to add another one, ability to handle emotions (mentioned but mostly in terms of patience) and ability to stay focused. Two programmers that start with similar levels at the thing that OP listed, but one able to stay focused and productive and the other jumping on YouTube, HN half the day (yes, that's me in many periods) etc are gonna have different impact and progression with time.
Do you think there's a way to train focus?
No and it's pointless to force yourself to focus. If it's not natural, it's not worth it. Do things for fun and stop taking yourself too seriously
Re: The best programmers I know
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trouble is that there is a strong correlation between being able to design good interfaces and being able to prepare good documentation. Meaning, where guessing fails, the reference is bound to also fail due to inaccuracies or failing to communicate what you need to know. Which stands to reason as both require concern for how the user perceives the product. That is a skill in its own right. In practice, so many t…
> The trouble is that there is a strong correlation between being able to design good interfaces and being able to prepare good documentation. Meaning, where guessing fails, the reference is bound to also fail due to inaccuracies or failing to communicate what you need to know. Which stands to reason as both require concern for how the user perceives the product. I think we're talking about different kinds of guessin…
> Like "I don't know anything, so I'm just going to try "stuff" I find online without really understanding.
A reasonable place to start. But fair that you can't stop there if it isn't working. Next step, in my opinion, is to look at the interface more closely to see if it provides any hints. It will most of the time if it is well designed.
> But even with the best designed interfaces, not everything is discoverable
Sure. That's what the test suite is for, though: To document for users full intent and usage. You're still not going to go to a reference for that. As an added bonus, it is self-validating, so none of the "is it me or is the reference incorrect?" rigamarole.
Re: The best programmers I know
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always get a lot of pushback for avoiding frameworks and libraries, and rolling most things by hand. But, most frameworks and libraries aren't built to be audit-grade robust, don't have enterprise level compatibility promises, can't guarantee that there won't be suprise performance impacts for arbitrary use cases, etc. Sometimes, a third party library (like sql-lite) makes the cut. But frameworks and libraries that…
This is smart if you work for a company that actually needs this level of robustness. The problem is that most don't, and a lot of people who work for these companies wish they were working someone "better"/"more important," so they pretend they actually do need this level of performance. The guy like you on a mission critical team at a cutting edge company is a godsend and will be a big part of why the project/compa…
[deleted]
Re: The best programmers I know
#190Not guessing is perhaps the most important thing to the business. I developed a lot of my problem solving skills in semiconductor manufacturing where the cost of a bad assumption tends to be astronomical. You need to be able to determine exactly what the root cause is 100% of the time or everything goes to hell really fast. If there isn't a way to figure out the root cause, you now have 2 tickets to resolve. I'll thr…
I always get a lot of pushback for avoiding frameworks and libraries, and rolling most things by hand. But, most frameworks and libraries aren't built to be audit-grade robust, don't have enterprise level compatibility promises, can't guarantee that there won't be suprise performance impacts for arbitrary use cases, etc. Sometimes, a third party library (like sql-lite) makes the cut. But frameworks and libraries that…
This is very contextual. If I'm building a web application for an early stage startup which is basically a bunch of pretty CRUD views I'm absolutely using a framework for it, there's no point in hand rolling everything when the problem being solved is exactly what a framework is designed to do. If it's something safety critical, or where getting software updates out to it is going to be a problem, I'm probably going to end up hand rolling a lot more and depending on frameworks less, because I need to understand what the failure modes are and how it's going to deal with them.