The Duct Tape Programmer
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The Duct Tape Programmer
1–10 of 123 posts
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#2I sometimes feel that programming is the mathematical/logical equivalent of the kludges on this site http://thereifixedit.com/
BTW there are some great JWZ links here http://www.reddit.com/domain/jwz.org
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#3Maybe Netscape's duct-tape programming had some side-effects though...
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#4Basically, a hacker.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#5"Any kind of coding technique that’s even slightly complicated is going to doom your project."
"They xor the 'next' and 'prev' pointers of their linked list into a single DWORD to save 32 bits, because they’re... smart enough, to pull it off."
How is that not even slightly complicated?
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#6Maybe Netscape's duct-tape programming had some side-effects though... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
If you read the chapter that Joel recommends, it talks about the design patterns guys that came in and how the anti-duct tape guys had a role to play in that delay.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#7Maybe Netscape's duct-tape programming had some side-effects though... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
If you read the chapter that Joel recommends, it talks about the design patterns guys that came in and how the anti-duct tape guys had a role to play in that delay.
I haven't read the book yet, plan to get it soon. Sounds awesome.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#8"Any kind of coding technique that’s even slightly complicated is going to doom your project." "They xor the 'next' and 'prev' pointers of their linked list into a single DWORD to save 32 bits, because they’re... smart enough, to pull it off." How is that not even slightly complicated?
If you're reusing that nice general list you wrote ages ago with static inlines so that there isn't any function call overhead anyway, it's trivial, because you change the "get next element" and "get prev element" functions and never worry about it again. Complicated algorithm != complicated coding technique. It's simple expression of smart algorithms.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#9Awesome read. I couldn't agree more.
I've worked with a great many 'theorists' coders and they never get anything done. They spend too much time abstracting into nothingness. You know.. the kind of guys who remind you of your 3rd grade grammar teacher making sure you know when to use 'whom' vs 'who'...
While I think eventually one would refine their product so that it uses best practices I would say that having customers and a product should definitely be a prerequisite.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer
#10"Any kind of coding technique that’s even slightly complicated is going to doom your project." "They xor the 'next' and 'prev' pointers of their linked list into a single DWORD to save 32 bits, because they’re... smart enough, to pull it off." How is that not even slightly complicated?
The Kolmogorov complexity of COM is, at the very least, hundreds of kilobytes of itchy, fidgety, sensitive, and complicated code. The Kolmogorov complexity of xor'ing two pointers to save 32 bits is on the order of tens or hundreds of bytes. (I'm using the term a bit loosely, obviously, but I think it gets the point across.) I suppose it depends on the limit of "slightly", but in context I think it's clear we're talking about "techniques" that are more than a three line hack in your linked list library. YMMV. (That is, I do see the point you are trying to make.)
Presumably, the duct tape programmer is doing that because it is the difference between making the product go and not making the product go, not because they love bit packing. It's not a technique I'd adopt today, but Zawinski (just to choose one example from his repertoire I've read about) was trying to make machines with, say, 8MB of RAM able to read thousands of email messages. You get a bit nutty under those constraints, or you ship slow crap. There isn't much of a third choice. (Fast and featureless, maybe.)
(I think I can bid lower than 8MB of RAM, too, but I'm a bit fuzzy on netscape timeframes vs. ram timeframes. I think 4.0 was in the 32-64-128MB era, putting 3.0 a ways back, but I'm not sure.)