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If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

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Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#101

Post by mnicole »

BCM43 wrote: post #52
sillysaurus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter snark isn't normal, it's an exceptional case. No, this isn't true. It's completely normal. It's been normal since long before Twitter. In exactly the same way high school bullying is normal, this is most definitely (a) prevalent, and (b) a problem. But it won't change, because people tolerate it. You want me to open up my personal projects? It's not going to happen. It won't happen because we live in an e…

Can you link to other examples of this happening?

This is why I recently left Twitter; it's just a breeding ground for smartass one-liners in hopes of retweets rather than intelligent conversation. I don't buy the idea that "this is just the medium" because it's easier to be mean than it is to be nice. If you want to have an argument with someone, write it out somewhere else and tweet the link to them.

Even if you're only following prominent people in your industry, you see some really embarrassing back-and-forths. I didn't want to get myself involved in the ones dealing with my friends and people I enjoyed because I have no idea who I will run into throughout my career, so I deleted my account.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#102

Post by chewxy »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #17
up_and_up wrote: post #4

> Now, I’m all for bad projects and bad code being called out. Bullshit, sorry. Questions to ask yourself before "calling out bad code". 1. Does this code belong to someone on your team? 2. Does your code rely on this code? 3. Does the code represent a risk to you or your business in some way? 4. Do you have the direct contact info for the developer so you can appropriately, discretely and professionally inform them…

That is the weird thing about github though. On the one hand you have big important apps there such as Linux and Rails which have quality standards and where developers at large should take a look and make their voices known if they can find things that suck. The argument I guess is, at what point does it become fair game for criticism? OTOH it is also a place for your crappy bash scripts. I've got plenty of hacky sc…

Which is why I put my shitty scripts in gist (in fact I am such a shitty programmer, I practically have an empty github public profile), I share them in my blog, and last week, I was actually horrified that someone used my shitty scripts and shitty methods that I outlined in my blog (http://blog.chewxy.com/2012/11/16/random-documents-from-couc...), I removed my gist.

I don't want people to use my shitty methods or shitty code, I just want somewhere to put my thoughts.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#104

Post by pbiggar »

jussij wrote: post #68
pbiggar wrote: post #14

Another issue in the "is Node right for this" is that it's very very portable, significantly more so that shell scripts (Mac uses BSD utilities, windows has nothing unless you have cygwin), and even slightly more portable than python.

> windows has nothing unless you have cygwin A lot of the Unix tools (including SED) run just fine on Windows without cygwin: http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?p=2683

Right, you need to install them. Having node is a less onerous requirement than having all the gnu tools, on windows.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#105

Post by ragmondo »

georgemcbay wrote: post #86

This is getting way off topic of the original project, but as an older (40) programmer, I've learned that even if code is objectively bad you generally shouldn't call it out unless you have the full context of how it got that way. I write code every day, some of it is great, most of it is good, some of it is shit ( working shit, but shit nonetheless). The reason some of it is shit varies: time constraints don't allow…

exactly. I am in the same era as you and unfortunately haven't managed to hook facebook or google to hire me so my day consists of making the most out of the shit I am served each and every day. You know that 3 line shell script that accounts only needed to run once a year ? Yes that migrated into an 20,000 line perl module that HAS TO run every night without fail but nooooo do they want to (pay to) re-engineer it ? No. Because the customer would not benefit.

The most fun I have at work now is "try to get the most audacious python module through the firewall and then get it approved by the project manager as they have absolutely no clue about what I do".

Sorry kids but unless you make it (and make it big)... that's you in ten years time.

If I am honest, I have got over the "OMG what's it written in?" stage. If it works and if the (time saving per run * the times I need to run it ) > time it would take to write it myself, then .. that's a success. Then.. move onto the next issue to get some project tasks done, contract renewed, kids fed, mortgage paid etc etc etc.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#106

Post by jussij »

vacri wrote: post #95
jussij wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is drawing a fairly long bow. I read his use of the word bullshit as effectively saying rubbish, only in a more colourful way. So to paraphrase the OP I read him as saying: Rubbish, I don't agree with you and here is a list of reasons why?

I agree with you: "rubbish" is the same as "bullshit". It's still saying "what you've said is worthless". I don't have a problem with it, but it is the same semantics as what started this whole issue - though he does expand into a list of reasons (which isn't possible on twitter).

I think you are reading too much into the term "bullshit".

Now, granted the word can take on different levels of intensity depending on the circumstances in which it is used.

But it can and is used in general conversation and in that context it means nothing more than "I don't agree with you".

At least that is how the term bullshit is used here in Australia.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#107

Post by mkhattab »

zeeg wrote: post #80

If you call out bad code, you call out bad people? Half of you included, look at the ridiculous shit you say, and how much more offensive you are than anything anyone originally said. Also this is great for a laugh: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/116385/Slingshot/Pictures/Screen%20S...

I agree, the responses are much worse that was originally said. There's also the expectation that you'll suck it up and deal with it which betrays the purpose for reacting against what you said in the first place.

Oh, you missed the tweet, in the screenshot, where he wishes you get cancer and that he calls you a cunt :)

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#108

Post by jussij »

CodeMage wrote: post #90
jussij wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is drawing a fairly long bow. I read his use of the word bullshit as effectively saying rubbish, only in a more colourful way. So to paraphrase the OP I read him as saying: Rubbish, I don't agree with you and here is a list of reasons why?

I assume that "rubbish" or "bullshit" refer to what the other person said, so when you expand that paraphrase it turns out like this: "What you said is rubbish. I don't agree with you and here is a list of reasons why." Now, can you tell me what value there is in the "What you said is rubbish" part? Let's go one step further: what do you lose by omitting that part? Mind, I'm just as sick as the next guy of the whole…

> what do you lose by omitting that part?

Sure, there are many ways the OP could have phrased his response.

Personally, I don't think the approach use to attack someone else's point of view is that important, provided the attack is aimed at the message and not the messenger.

In this case I don't think the OP said anything about the messenger.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#109

Post by jsnell »

gjulianm wrote: post #53
pjungwir wrote: post #40

I'd still like to know how these jerks even came across Heather's code in the first place. I suppose I should be grateful for obscurity. I even have a command-line utility written in C to count from 1 to 10. (Well it does a little more than that, but that's the general idea.) I'd hate to hear what they think of it. I'm not really a C coder so I'm sure it's fairly ugly, and I suppose they'd say it "shouldn't exist at…

Well, now I'm curious for that CLI. Why do you need an utility to count from 1 to 10?

I use the standard Unix utility "seq" almost daily as part of shell one-liners. Lots of things are named with a sequential component. Sometimes iterating over those is easily done with a shell glob, but sometimes it's just simpler to do "for i in $(seq 1 8); do restart foo-$i; done".

It's very useful, but basically impossible to discover except by happening to see somebody else use it. So I really don't wonder that somebody would end up unknowingly reimplementing it.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#110

Post by ncallaway »

MartinCron wrote: post #93
carbocation wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm simply saying that at the moment, either of those would be more interesting than total ignorance.

Actually, this makes me think... I don't think I've ever given feedback on an open source project. Maybe I, as someone horrified by Heather Arthur's story, have some sort of ethical obligation to provide constructive and helpful feedback to people. I'm not a great programmer, but I've been at this for long enough to have some useful opinions. Open invitation for my fellow HN community members: point me at a repo and…

This reminds me of the recent ShowHN of criticue (http://criticue.com/).

You could do something similar (or those guys could do it) where you provide feedback on other people's repositories in exchange for feedback on your repository. Sort of a community code review process.

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