How I Became a Better Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Became a Better Programmer

#121

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

sheepmullet wrote: post #64

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the medium-large sized projects I work on you won't be making any major changes until the 12-18month mark. It seems like that'd exclude anyone who wants to make a name for themselves, which usually means excluding all the best people.

What do you mean? The two best developers I know have spent 12 years at Microsoft and 6 years at Google respectively. What makes you think you need to switch jobs every 12-18 months to make a name for yourself? And what makes you think the best developers care about making a name for themselves?

> Microsoft and 6 years at Google respectively

Aren't these the end-goal companies anyway? Next is potential start-up?

Re: How I Became a Better Programmer

#122

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #114

BurningFrog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work exactly? Why can't you just keep working until you consider your task done?

Are you working as a developer? If so, how do I join your team? In my life as a developer I have deadlines that are set by customers and no amount of explanation that I need another week to make the code bomb-proof will shift them.

I've heard about jobs like that, but I would never take one. There are far less insane developer jobs out there, and you could try to find one!

Development time is inherently very hard to predict, so strict deadlines - even if set by people who understand the technical issues don't make a lot of sense. There many books on this, and I won't try to summarize them here.

Still, if you have a deadline, you can use your time however you want before the deadline, right? So if it's better/faster to clean up the code after you made it work than to try to type everything perfectly the first time, what's stopping you?

Or is it that the deadlines are so tight that you only have time to write terrible code?

Re: How I Became a Better Programmer

#123

Post by wedesoft » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 9:11 AM UTC

dplgk wrote: post #83

BurningFrog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time to clean up the code is when it already does what it should. That is: Make it pretty and readable and DRY once the code works. Until then my code can have several ugly and improvised things I've left for later.

> The time to clean up the code is when it already does what it should. 1. That's a good way to break it. 2. Typically there is not extra time given to cleanup code, write docs and unit tests.

In TDD you do small cycles: 1. write failing test, 2. write code to pass test, 3. refactor I.e. refactoring is part of the workflow

Re: How I Became a Better Programmer

#124

Post by jlongster » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

bobwaycott wrote: post #40

couchand wrote: post #11

There's a lot of value here, but I have to raise concerns about a few things. First, the title: written in the past tense makes it seem like he believes the journey is complete. The article itself doesn't convey that message, fortunately. But I think it's worth noting that a critical skill for a professional is constant education - don't be satisfied that you're already "better", get better every day. I also strongly…

I met James around 9 years ago when I was first starting out in professional development, before he eventually joined Mozilla. I inherited more than one massive project from him, and I'd like to assure you he did not actually ignore the form of his code, nor did he avoid improvements that paid huge dividends. I've always been rather OCD about DRYness, and I never had cause to complain about the quality of his work, n…

Holy crap Bob, hi! Thank you for the kind words :) (and be honest, I'm sure there were things to complain about from my projects haha)

Re: How I Became a Better Programmer

#125

Post by bobwaycott » Sat, Mar 25, 2017, 2:02 AM UTC

jlongster wrote: post #124

bobwaycott wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met James around 9 years ago when I was first starting out in professional development, before he eventually joined Mozilla. I inherited more than one massive project from him, and I'd like to assure you he did not actually ignore the form of his code, nor did he avoid improvements that paid huge dividends. I've always been rather OCD about DRYness, and I never had cause to complain about the quality of his work, n…

Holy crap Bob, hi! Thank you for the kind words :) (and be honest, I'm sure there were things to complain about from my projects haha)

We all find things to complain about. But quality of your work or unnecessary duplication wasn't one of them. ;)