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A Million Lines of Bad Code

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Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#61

Post by conistonwater »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #16
swalsh wrote: post #6

I recently read the book "How to Win Friends & Influence People", bad title great book. My main take away from this is I've been talking to people really badly for the last 27 years. I wish I had read this book in middle school. But this blog reminded me of some of the concepts from the book, its far more productive to give positive encouragement than to give negative feedback, and just adding a complement isn't enou…

I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people. Rece…

> Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s.

The guy is not just a human being, he's also a professional whose job it is to know what he's doing. Shouldn't there be some sense of "duty to do a job well", not just "duty to care about someone's feelings"? If he's not pulling his weight and is failing at his job, then the poor responses are his fault also.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#62

Post by berntb »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #16
swalsh wrote: post #6

I recently read the book "How to Win Friends & Influence People", bad title great book. My main take away from this is I've been talking to people really badly for the last 27 years. I wish I had read this book in middle school. But this blog reminded me of some of the concepts from the book, its far more productive to give positive encouragement than to give negative feedback, and just adding a complement isn't enou…

I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people. Rece…

I get this helping and teaching. It is a great way to learn yourself. If I had any pedagogical talent and hence able to teach more than one person at a time, I'd have become a teacher a long time ago.

After this last week (I swear, beyond bad; _obfuscated_ code) I feel like answering with "Hire me!" :-) But I have forgotten bash and Makefiles now. (And it don't help that I'm Hellbanned. :-) )

Anyway, about the article, I do have quite a bit of code that I should have released if I wasn't embarrassed. And that is both stupid and sad.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#63

Post by michaelochurch »

Bad code is a great wedge for business people to get programmers obsessed with individual relative ranking and prevent any sort of collective action.

I certainly had jobs in the past where I got angry over bad code when, in fact, I should have been bad at the businessmen making me use the bad code (instead of putting time on the calendar to write things properly) and setting the deadlines that caused the bad code.

For sure, there are some sloppy, borderline-unethical engineers who write shitty fast code to get promoted away from the maintenance messes they generate... and there are definitely some incompetent engineers. For the most part, though, bad code is a symptom of bad leadership rather than bad programmers. Under a tight enough deadline, everyone's code will be shit.

And, of course, it goes without saying that the proper response to bad code isn't to flip out on the person, but to teach him how to do it better. One of the reasons why I like using high-productivity languages like Haskell rather than Java is that it selects for people who genuinely want to improve.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#64

Post by LoSboccacc »

artursapek wrote: post #26
bstamour wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the martial arts community we call this "praise, correct, praise."

Programmers tend to incline towards efficiency. I think that's why we often skip the bread and deliver only the filling. IMO there's a big difference between a criticism sandwich and tactful criticism.

on the other hand, would you like to work with someone that doesn't take criticism well and whom jumps on the defensive about random pieces of code, of all things?

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#65

Post by tthrowaway »

oldmanjay wrote: post #36
swalsh wrote: post #6

I recently read the book "How to Win Friends & Influence People", bad title great book. My main take away from this is I've been talking to people really badly for the last 27 years. I wish I had read this book in middle school. But this blog reminded me of some of the concepts from the book, its far more productive to give positive encouragement than to give negative feedback, and just adding a complement isn't enou…

This is helpful for sure, but it's also very useful to work on having a thick enough skin to take insulting feedback in a positive fashion. After all, the only way someone can offend you is if you let them.

I'm a junior dev, I have a ton to learn and I don't for a moment think I know more than our senior dev. But working with this guy, and trying to learn from him, is a nightmare.

When I ask "why should I do this rather than that?", I either get a muddy explanation, or none at all.

Worse still is inconsistency. Just recently I was working on a project, went through several reviews without comment on the approach, was told "almost done just fix these tests". After waiting a week for review of those last tweaks, the review was "this is fundamentally flawed and shouldn't be done this way at all."

Now I'm not saying that's wrong, but it would have been better to hear that three weeks ago. Nor is the explanation of _why_ it's flawed the slightest bit clear.

Further, the new approach does _not_ support the business need motivating these changes in the first place. I am figuring out how to support that need within the directed approach, but it is harder than the first design would have been. Again, that doesn't mean I was right -- sometimes there are choices where you put the ugly stuff. These changes are pretty deep in our architecture, and so touch a lot of code. If being clean there means that some top-level stuff is more complicated, that is probably the right trade-off. But it would be nice to have a "sorry, I didn't think this through soon enough." And no, I am not the idiot I'm made out to be because I didn't, as a junior dev, immediately and fully understand how all the pieces should fit together.

Nor is this a two-way street. I've had moments where I've pointed out what seems like problems, been told I'm wrong, or ignored . . . and then find that the issue is quietly fixed a few days later. We do some stuff that is just flat wrong because that's how he likes it.

I'm not the only one, the others with more experience than I have similar problems.

I'm learning. The guy has good instincts, so his critiques usually lead in the right direction, so I roll with it and figure out the principles for myself. But it is absolutely zero fun working with this guy. I've become averse to submitting code for review, because I never know when the process will take 180 and stuff that was fine becomes crap. And while I think I'm getting better, I have to figure out how to build confidence in those skills, because I'm not going to get it from this feedback loop. Probably that will be working on my own projects, taking what I'm learning and using that to make them better. And at some point I'll move on.

Tough feedback, even insulting feedback, is ok with me. I'll work with it. But if you're going to be tough, then you have to be fair, you have to be clear, and you have to be right.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#66

Post by AceJohnny2 »

irremediable wrote: post #37
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people. Rece…

Very well said. It's wrong to be a dick, but it's also the natural response to a lot of stressful situations. Think of trying to give tech support to relatives, for example. It's too easy to get annoyed with other people, and this is especially true when you're under pressure and they're MEANT TO BE HELPING, DAMNIT! FWIW, I suspect that you're much more experienced in this stuff than me, so it's a bit arrogant for me…

That's actually the route I've been trying to follow, but that's where the experience gap becomes a problem. I can give him some ressources on how to use Git or learn Python, but it's been so long that I don't even know where to start for the CLI :|

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#67

Post by autoreleasepool »

I don't see anything wrong with the "mean-spirited" humor in the XKCD comic. The cartoon is funny. It's supposed to be a joke. Anyways, it's not like those remarks are directed at anyone in particular -- just a fictional stick figure. I don't have any ethical qualms about laughing at his expense.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#68

Post by jonex »

MichaelGG wrote: post #25
swalsh wrote: post #6

I recently read the book "How to Win Friends & Influence People", bad title great book. My main take away from this is I've been talking to people really badly for the last 27 years. I wish I had read this book in middle school. But this blog reminded me of some of the concepts from the book, its far more productive to give positive encouragement than to give negative feedback, and just adding a complement isn't enou…

Don't you feel patronized when people do that though? Be as rude as you want to me, as long as you're correct. As for myself, I tend to not call out the positive parts of something, because that's sort of implicit. I would not bother to point out that the file reading code is wrong if the whole thing was broken. I admit I'm probably incorrect here, but I notice people try this "say something positive" and it really c…

I gotta wonder, do you actually have such confidence yourself that you assume that everything other people _does not_ comment was good? If so congratulations! A suggestion though, on how you could improve the confidence in people like me - who aren't sure everything not mentioned is good - would be to actually point out the positive parts even if you don't feel that it is necessary.

I have to admit though, it took many years and a few courses in psychology until I finally could admit to myself and my surroundings that I actually need positive reinforcement, that negative reinforcement, even if true and relevant, could even be detrimental to my performance.

I do agree on the importance of not just "say something positive", it has to be real, most people have probably filled their quota of obviously false/exaggerated complements in preschool. I myself struggle with finding the right balance between sounding patronizing and being overly critical.

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#69

Post by gknoy »

cubano wrote: post #31

If only my clients and recent bosses would consider refactoring a valid billing line item... I can only imagine sending an invoice today to my three top clients with "5 Hours Refactoring Bad Code That is Working But Could Be Better Looking....$400". There is just no way I would get paid. Unfortunately, I have interests outside of working on code that mostly preclude me from sitting for hours happily breaking-and-then…

Would it work to say, "Added test coverage, refactored code to increase future maintainability"?

Re: A Million Lines of Bad Code

#70

Post by AceJohnny2 »

conistonwater wrote: post #61
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people. Rece…

> Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s. The guy is not just a human being, he's also a professional whose job it is to know what he's doing. Shouldn't there be some sense of "duty to do a job well", not just "duty to care about someone's feelings"? If he's not pulling his weight and is failing at his job, then the…

Sound like you haven't been working with outsourced talent and a boss that says "this is all we've got, deal with it." ;)

The "interesting" thing here is the cultural gap, where these folks have had all initiative beaten out of them throughout their education, where the cost of failure is higher than that of not trying. It's really disheartening.

My point is, it's heard to blame the person when you know how flawed is the system they come from.

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