Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

codinghorror.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 47 posts

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#21

Post by jimbokun »

ErrantX wrote: post #6
mikedouglas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost any response was guaranteed fairly decent coverage from news.yc.

True. I was actually looking forward to see the guy attempt the "clone". For all the meta discussion about what exactly "clone" completely entails simply the idea of trying to roll out something along the same lines in a weekend is intriguing. Could it be done? How would it go down? Would working processes change? Is there stuff to learn about the development process that speed highlights? It could make a great discu…

I recently read Paul Bucheit's chapter in Founders at Work. I believe AdSense and Gmail were ideas he knocked out in an evening or otherwise in addition to his regular duties. They were not products at that point, of course. But there was enough there that, instead of theoretically defending the idea that the ideas could work in principle, he simply demonstrated them working in reality. No one could argue, then, that those ideas were impractical, and that laid the groundwork for making them into real products.

I think those are good examples of "do it in a weekend" type projects. Prove something can be done, before worrying about making a real product out of it.

(Of course, having all of Google's infrastructure at your disposal is nice for implementing some ideas in a weekend or less. We do have AppEngine, though.)

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#22

Post by access_denied »

edw519 wrote: post #5

Code may be trivial, but it's still the critical path. Even if you do everything else well, your chances of success decrease geometrically with the crappiness of your code. Or... Success = (A+B+C+...+Z) * SQ^2 where SQ is Software Quality and A thru Z are everything else.

The critical path is getting people to pay (repeatedly) for this thing.

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#23

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #18
jbeerhalter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The longest program I have ever written was for a CS lab, and I got extra credit for it because I am the awesome." Did you mean to write "I am the awesome"? Because I swear I heard that same phrase from notable CS kids at CMU.

The voice I was going for was "immature but net-savvy". I live in central Japan rather than central Michigan so I would put the common word choice down to global cultural diffusion aided by the Internet rather than desire to mock any individual person, particularly anybody you know.

[deleted]

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#24

Post by david927 »

w1ntermute wrote: post #14
patio11 wrote: post #12

I really hope nobody with any industry experience thought SO could be cloned in a weekend. That notion screams "The longest program I have ever written was for a CS lab, and I got extra credit for it because I am the awesome." But, hypothetically supposing that it had been cloned in a weekend, then you'd be staring at the 90% of a software business which does not happen in an IDE. My app can be cloned in a weekend. I…

ktharavaad ( http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ktharavaad ), the user who said he could clone SO in a weekend ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501 ), hasn't commented on HN since before the weekend ( http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ktharavaad ), so I'm guessing he learnt his lesson. That said, I think people are making too big a deal out of this. Even the best of us occasionally end up shooting comme…

I have industry experience and I'm rooting for ktharavaad. An existing site in an exact spec, and when you have an exact spec, it makes everything much easier. Next, there's Pareto's Law which means that, yes, if ktharavaad is a rock star, he can do 80% in a full weekend. And then 10% more the following week. Then 5% more the following two weeks.

The code is trivial. It's really understanding what you're up against and the architecture that will get you there that's hard.

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#26

Post by sophacles »

jimbokun wrote: post #21
ErrantX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I was actually looking forward to see the guy attempt the "clone". For all the meta discussion about what exactly "clone" completely entails simply the idea of trying to roll out something along the same lines in a weekend is intriguing. Could it be done? How would it go down? Would working processes change? Is there stuff to learn about the development process that speed highlights? It could make a great discu…

I recently read Paul Bucheit's chapter in Founders at Work. I believe AdSense and Gmail were ideas he knocked out in an evening or otherwise in addition to his regular duties. They were not products at that point, of course. But there was enough there that, instead of theoretically defending the idea that the ideas could work in principle, he simply demonstrated them working in reality. No one could argue, then, that…

I know many of my better ideas have been done over a weekend or afterhours for a week. The thing is that when its not a "complete project" these things are very easy to bang out. It's the next 6 months where the polish gets added. (side rant: and over those 6 months the frontend guys get all the oohs, ahhs, and credit, despite your having done the core work).

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#27

Post by bint »

mikedouglas wrote: post #9

We've already seen a partial mea culpa from the original author of the comment. His project[1] now suggests StackOverflow can be cloned in "over the course of the[sic] weekends", instead of, you know, already being finished. [1]: http://code.google.com/p/hackerexchange/

Wrong. That was a simple typo he made when he first set up the site, when he was still planning to write in over the weekend.

He didn't back out because he thought it would be too hard. According to him, he backed out because it would be disrespectful.

IMO, if he still thinks he can do it, he should do it and make everyone who is putting him down shut up. And if he fails, so what? At least he will learn a lot.

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#28

Post by w1ntermute »

patio11 wrote: post #18
jbeerhalter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The longest program I have ever written was for a CS lab, and I got extra credit for it because I am the awesome." Did you mean to write "I am the awesome"? Because I swear I heard that same phrase from notable CS kids at CMU.

The voice I was going for was "immature but net-savvy". I live in central Japan rather than central Michigan so I would put the common word choice down to global cultural diffusion aided by the Internet rather than desire to mock any individual person, particularly anybody you know.

"central Michigan"

In that context, CMU == Carnegie Mellon University (my guess anyway, since Carnegie Mellon is well known for their CS/CE/EE programs).

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#29

Post by nomoresecrets »

jimbokun wrote: post #20
fogus wrote: post #2

> No, I don't take this claim seriously. Not enough to write a response. Uhhh, isn't the post his response? Just saying.

No. He starts off by conceding the point, basically. The title is "Code: It's Trivial." So assume that you can write all of the code for Stack Overflow in a weekend. He lists 13 things that his team spends time on that are not writing code (at least not in the sense of adding new features or fixing already reported bugs). His point is that writing code is a relatively small part of even a software business. An import…

"So assume that you can write all of the code for Stack Overflow in a weekend."

Only if you're a total idiot.

Re: Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial

#30

Post by nomoresecrets »

bint wrote: post #27
mikedouglas wrote: post #9

We've already seen a partial mea culpa from the original author of the comment. His project[1] now suggests StackOverflow can be cloned in "over the course of the[sic] weekends", instead of, you know, already being finished. [1]: http://code.google.com/p/hackerexchange/

Wrong. That was a simple typo he made when he first set up the site, when he was still planning to write in over the weekend. He didn't back out because he thought it would be too hard. According to him, he backed out because it would be disrespectful. IMO, if he still thinks he can do it, he should do it and make everyone who is putting him down shut up. And if he fails, so what? At least he will learn a lot.

"He didn't back out because he thought it would be too hard. According to him, he backed out because it would be disrespectful."

Excuse my language, but this comment deserves it: I've seen horse-shit with less horse-shit in it.

Post reply on HN