Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development • Hacker News Board

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#131

Post by ska » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

aaggarwal wrote: post #117

ska wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly there's (seemingly) no way to interview people for this ability I think there is. Show the candidate some bad code. Not WTF code, but something you wouldn't be proud of but is realistic. Bonus points if you're comfortable enough to pull this out of your own production system. Ask the candidate about adding some functionality, but be clear that cleanup and refactoring changes are fine (even encouraged). The co…

It would be actually interesting to look at the commits of a candidate's any online project repository from the very start and observe how the candidate made the progress with respect to the structure of code and improvement in coding practice. To check whether the candidate optimizes and refactors the code during the development of the project leading to a stable release.

That's interesting when available, yes.

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#132

Post by Beltiras » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

I disagree. Communication is the most important. It's the number one cause of failed software project. Miscommunicated features, capabilities, scope, failure to name a few. My favourite is the last one. Not standing up and recognizing that an approach is not working due to fear has to stand out as a big one.

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#133

Post by wodenokoto » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #36

msandford wrote: post #7

This is incredibly true. I once turned 60kLoC of classic ASP in VBScript into about 20kLoC of python/django including templates. And added a bunch of features that would have been impossible on the old code-base. It turned the job from hellish (features were impossible to add) to very nearly boring (there wasn't much to do anymore). So with this newfound freedom I built some machines to automate the data entry and on…

I got fired from a job because I had done this and they couldn't figure out how to keep me billable after that. Well, I got fired because I would "show up late" and "leave early" because there was nothing else for me to do (even though I was actually pulling a full 40 hours, they were expecting 60 out of people). They could have given me more work, put me on new projects, etc., like I kept asking to be done, but inst…

Billing by the hour is basically just telling people how much effort you expect the task to require smoothed by how valuable it is to you. If you can do it quicker, I say bill the full amount of time and if they have extra inquiries, fit it into the buffer zone.

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#134

Post by setitimer » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #49

the number one most important skill is how to keep a tangle of features from collapsing under the weight of its own complexity Agreed. very rarely is there some tricky data structure or algorithm that casts a looming shadow over everything else Agreed, BUT... In order to organize, sooner or later, you will have to get clever (with tricky data structures or algorithms). How I have always built something big and/or com…

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian W. Kernighan

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#135

Post by chii » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

aaggarwal wrote: post #117

ska wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly there's (seemingly) no way to interview people for this ability I think there is. Show the candidate some bad code. Not WTF code, but something you wouldn't be proud of but is realistic. Bonus points if you're comfortable enough to pull this out of your own production system. Ask the candidate about adding some functionality, but be clear that cleanup and refactoring changes are fine (even encouraged). The co…

It would be actually interesting to look at the commits of a candidate's any online project repository from the very start and observe how the candidate made the progress with respect to the structure of code and improvement in coding practice. To check whether the candidate optimizes and refactors the code during the development of the project leading to a stable release.

that assumes the candidate has an online repo somewhere. I think this is quite a discriminating practice - what if i don't do public projects?

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#136

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #26

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #9

There is just a nice magical moment though when you grok what an application does and how it is organized, especially when you didn't write it, which is likely the most often case. I think a large issue is when an application has new people working on it or entirely new teams that maintain it. That is when the original authors methodology and organization of the application falls to the immediate need of the day. The…

This. Organization is in the eye of the beholder. I've seen my code bases taken over and completely reversed, and frankly I have done the same. If only there was a better way to communicate exactly what you were trying to do.

I don't know if this is solvable, it could just be human nature.

Some folks like the analogy of software and building construction. I like the comparison to cooking... in this case the closest thing would be how a chef sets up their work space and how it is organized for what they are cooking.

Some like it one way, some like it another - is one way better or worse?

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#137

Post by jsuar » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

vijayr wrote: post #55

ska wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly there's (seemingly) no way to interview people for this ability I think there is. Show the candidate some bad code. Not WTF code, but something you wouldn't be proud of but is realistic. Bonus points if you're comfortable enough to pull this out of your own production system. Ask the candidate about adding some functionality, but be clear that cleanup and refactoring changes are fine (even encouraged). The co…

This happened to me once. I went for an an interview at a huge real estate company. They had a chat with me for exactly five minutes, then gave me a computer (an old one, with keyboard not working properly) and some legacy code. I wasn't asked to fix it, but I was asked to make a small change and given half hour for it. That code had no documentation and no comments. Then 5 more mins to explain what I understood abou…

I wonder why this isn't more common with interviews.

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#138

Post by DevPad » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

Yeah, the best developers I've ever seen are about simplifying things, avoid overcomplication for too much "flexibility".

The zen of Python https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ say:

    Simple is better than complex.

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#139

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #96

w1ntermute wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How'd you do it if the keyboard wasn't working?

Our main product was developed on a keyboard that was missing a "w". It's not a big deal, though - you can use a for(;;) loop instead of a while loop without hurting performance. And it's easy to just avoid "w" words in the view templates by being clever with word choice. Of course, that's not true at all. But giving someone a defective-but-not-entirely-broken tool can be a clever way of seeing how they work around p…

[deleted]

Re: Organizing complexity is the most important skill in software development

#140

Post by petejansson » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

Relevant: http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...

Summary: Toyota settled an unintended acceleration lawsuit connected with analysis of the source code for a 2005 Toyota Camry showed it was defective "spaghetti code."

There'a a lot of poorly-organized code in the world, and a typical excuse for not cleaning it up is that "it works" so there would be no return on fixing it. In the Toyota case, the code may have contributed to unintended acceleration, and did result in a legal exposure for which Toyota felt it was necessary to settle a lawsuit.