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If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

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Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#111

Post by philh »

MartinCron wrote: post #93
carbocation wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm simply saying that at the moment, either of those would be more interesting than total ignorance.

Actually, this makes me think... I don't think I've ever given feedback on an open source project. Maybe I, as someone horrified by Heather Arthur's story, have some sort of ethical obligation to provide constructive and helpful feedback to people. I'm not a great programmer, but I've been at this for long enough to have some useful opinions. Open invitation for my fellow HN community members: point me at a repo and…

I actually have been hoping to get feedback on whether people think https://github.com/ChickenProp/ds-debug is/could be useful.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#113

Post by pdonis »

pbiggar wrote: post #64
pdonis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

slightly more portable than python Can you elaborate on this?

I don't have any great experience with Node, but my understanding is that its built around libuv, which is really good at abstracting this stuff. From my experience of writing python scripts, it looks like you'll occasionally see things like "this doesnt work on Windows". Only occasionally though, hence "slightly".

Ah, ok, I wasn't aware of the libuv effort. Interesting.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#114

Post by damm »

I don't understand what has happened to people.

There is only 2 people who can call out said code.

They are: 1) Their Employer. Then you can ask them to refactor the code. 2) Them.

Additionally, your mother was right. If you don't have anything nice to say you shouldn't say anything at all.

Just because you were born on this planet and survived past birth; does not give you the right or the excuse to harm another person or cause harm to said person's "Value of Life".

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#115

Post by rektide »

5hoom wrote: post #81
reinhardt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing option: grow a thicker skin and don't take everything personally.

I've suffered pretty severe depression and anxiety for most of my adult life. While the idea that we should all just grow a thicker skin and 'just deal with it' is both understandable and practical given the nature of the internet - it just wont happen for me. I know myself well enough to have recognized that even a tiny drop of vitriol could have me questioning my every decision and shatter my self confidence for da…

please email tarballs to rektide+anongit@voodoowarez.com if you have code you have no aspirations for but wouldn't mind kicking out into the wild. i will eliminate author headers from the code and seed over p2p and make available. thank you for any sympathy you might have towards this request to let us syndicate your work.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#116

Post by rektide »

philh wrote: post #111
MartinCron wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, this makes me think... I don't think I've ever given feedback on an open source project. Maybe I, as someone horrified by Heather Arthur's story, have some sort of ethical obligation to provide constructive and helpful feedback to people. I'm not a great programmer, but I've been at this for long enough to have some useful opinions. Open invitation for my fellow HN community members: point me at a repo and…

I actually have been hoping to get feedback on whether people think https://github.com/ChickenProp/ds-debug is/could be useful.

a wire protocol for named context patches: you'd do better not writing your own wire serialization format, and instead adopting an existing transport: websockets, stomp, and MQTT all strike me as sufficiently stupid simple & end to end enough, or anything from thrift to zmq to flume for transport would be slightly more inter-linkable than your "length/json-payload" ad-hocracy.

it's JS but you might enjoy node-webworker, which uses websockets to implement inter-Node.js message passing: your specific case is debugger being an outbound messaging port, emitting context programmatically.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#117

Post by vacri »

jussij wrote: post #106
vacri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you: "rubbish" is the same as "bullshit". It's still saying "what you've said is worthless". I don't have a problem with it, but it is the same semantics as what started this whole issue - though he does expand into a list of reasons (which isn't possible on twitter).

I think you are reading too much into the term "bullshit". Now, granted the word can take on different levels of intensity depending on the circumstances in which it is used. But it can and is used in general conversation and in that context it means nothing more than "I don't agree with you". At least that is how the term bullshit is used here in Australia.

I am also Australian. :)

For what it's worth, I think most of the commentors are reading far too much into "this is an eye-bleeding script*.

I've seen people hurt by having what they've said called 'bullshit' by someone they respect; it's capable of emotional harm as well. That being said, let's not walk on eggshells.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#118

Post by dvo »

ragmondo wrote: post #105
georgemcbay wrote: post #86

This is getting way off topic of the original project, but as an older (40) programmer, I've learned that even if code is objectively bad you generally shouldn't call it out unless you have the full context of how it got that way. I write code every day, some of it is great, most of it is good, some of it is shit ( working shit, but shit nonetheless). The reason some of it is shit varies: time constraints don't allow…

exactly. I am in the same era as you and unfortunately haven't managed to hook facebook or google to hire me so my day consists of making the most out of the shit I am served each and every day. You know that 3 line shell script that accounts only needed to run once a year ? Yes that migrated into an 20,000 line perl module that HAS TO run every night without fail but nooooo do they want to (pay to) re-engineer it ?…

I stopped worrying much about so-called bad code a long time ago. Reading eye-watering, mind-numbing code is practically a pre-requisite for working on any non-trivial enterprise system at a business of any reasonable size. In many ways, you come to enjoy the challenge of it. I've had to read code written in an almost obfuscated manner in languages I'd never previously worked with before. You get used to it. You learn to read and grok just about anything.

On the topic of massive Perl scripts, I once worked on implementing a system that was an unholy maze of Perl, Pro-C, Pro-COBOL, Oracle Forms, Java, and PL/SQL. It was the first time I'd ever had to read and write Perl and Pro-C. I even remember reading Pro-COBOL at one point to debug a problem. Good times.

Since the above is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I'll clarify that I certainly think we should strive to write excellent code and constructively help each other to that end. We should probably be very slow to dispense judgement but quick to share carefully considered, contextually relevant advice. You really do need to understand the context under which something was written to make any useful statements about goodness or badness (which is still probably not that helpful a measure). Something that looks bad at first may be fantastic work considering the circumstances under which it was written.

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#119

Post by rjzzleep »

reinhardt wrote: post #54
MartinCron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can we as a development community rationally expect to grow the open source ecosystem and encourage people with this type of snobbery? There's one lesson that I'm personally taking from this, after unsolicited ridicule, one sincere apology, one bullshit non-apology, and one arrogant I have nothing to apologize for! If I build a small thing to scratch my own itch (which I often do) I'm going to think twice about s…

Missing option: grow a thicker skin and don't take everything personally.

she chose to read it. it's not like someone rubbed it in her face. well someone told her about it.

just like she chose to read the good things, she chose to read the bad things. SHE CHOSE.

people seem to ignore that little fact, instead they result to writing meaningless essays, on how to apply their opinion as a universal standard to life. nothx

Re: If You Call Out Bad Code, Make Sure It's Bad First

#120

Post by yycom »

vacri wrote: post #95
jussij wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is drawing a fairly long bow. I read his use of the word bullshit as effectively saying rubbish, only in a more colourful way. So to paraphrase the OP I read him as saying: Rubbish, I don't agree with you and here is a list of reasons why?

I agree with you: "rubbish" is the same as "bullshit". It's still saying "what you've said is worthless". I don't have a problem with it, but it is the same semantics as what started this whole issue - though he does expand into a list of reasons (which isn't possible on twitter).

One way to see if words are synonyms is to apply them to compound terms. In this case, "bullshit artist" is something that "rubbish artist" isn't.
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