A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
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A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
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Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#2A significant amount of everything is done by superstition.
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#3A significant amount of everything is done by superstition.
Still, important to be occasionally reminded of your own assumptions and corner-cutting.
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#4A significant amount of everything is done by superstition.
Still, important to be occasionally reminded of your own assumptions and corner-cutting.
Though as the author himself implies, it's not always appropriate to allocate the time necessary to do anything but corner-cutting.
"If you say that you don't take this relatively fast road for Linux init scripts, I'll raise my eyebrows a lot. You've really read the LSB specification for init scripts and your distribution's distro-specific documentation?"
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#5I actually really like the content of the article, but I'm not convinced superstition is the right word here. Yes, absolutely I have copied an init script / makefile or whatnot and if it worked after I tweaked it then I went on my business. But I didn't use it as is because of superstition, but rather because it now worked I believed it correct.
Yes, quite often that came without a perfect knowledge of every single option, certainly usually without referring to the manual for every one of them.
Perhaps this is semantics. But the definition of superstition is:
a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief
Which ya, isn't quite the right thing. Anyways, agree with the sentiment of this 100%, just not the title. :)
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#6I actually really like the content of the article, but I'm not convinced superstition is the right word here. Yes, absolutely I have copied an init script / makefile or whatnot and if it worked after I tweaked it then I went on my business. But I didn't use it as is because of superstition, but rather because it now worked I believed it correct. Yes, quite often that came without a perfect knowledge of every single o…
The term "blind faith" works, but may be a bit harsh.
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#7I actually really like the content of the article, but I'm not convinced superstition is the right word here. Yes, absolutely I have copied an init script / makefile or whatnot and if it worked after I tweaked it then I went on my business. But I didn't use it as is because of superstition, but rather because it now worked I believed it correct. Yes, quite often that came without a perfect knowledge of every single o…
Yeah, I don't really get what definition of "superstition" the author is intending here. It seems like "laziness" or "lack of rigor" would be more appropriate terms.
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#8Maybe a better term than "superstition" might be "validated experience". We do what has worked in the past.
It is true that there are standards that should be read and followed; the ones referred to in the article are probably among these.
But other standards have a fair amount of wishful thinking in them. (How many of you JS developers have read the latest ECMAScript standard?) Sometimes, what has worked in the past is a better guide for practice than what ought to work.
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#9I actually really like the content of the article, but I'm not convinced superstition is the right word here. Yes, absolutely I have copied an init script / makefile or whatnot and if it worked after I tweaked it then I went on my business. But I didn't use it as is because of superstition, but rather because it now worked I believed it correct. Yes, quite often that came without a perfect knowledge of every single o…
I think this is more commonly called "cargo cult programming", defined by Wikipedia[1] as: "the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose".
Re: A significant amount of programming is done by superstition
#10The problem here is that if it works, how is it superstition? When I knock on wood or throw salt over my shoulder, I don't have a way of verifying that I've averted disaster. However, I can test the code I don't understand, and if it does what it says it does (or does what I want it to do, since that's why I've selected it in the first place), then we're a step removed from superstition. There might be unintended consequences if I truly don't understand the code, but that is something else than superstition.