With strong tests, who cares about copy-paste though?
Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
151–160 of 186 posts
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree with you and frankly I'm shocked to see most of the responses here purporting copy-pasting someone else's code to be a legitimate practice. I also imagine that most if not all of these people are into web developed where there's a long history of copy-pasting snippets of code and no one knows what he's really doing. I've seen many people write a jQuery script for their website and calling themselve…
Same. I'm actually a little shocked HNers think regularly coping and pasting code snippets off the web is ok. That's, kind of crazy. This is bad especially for young developers (such as myself). Not to mention jeopardizing the security and integrity of your software project. I hear 'don't reinvent the wheel' often written in blogs etc. That is not good. The lazy developer would read that and go, 'oh, I dont need to k…
You seem very confident of your assessments. To the point you'll even suggest HNers who don't see things as you do are crazy.
Are you aware of the notion that expressed confidence tends toward being inversely proportional to competence? And that this is a key to insightful learning?
You've said you're a young developer, so perhaps you haven't recognized this aspect of mind yet, but there's plenty of solid science (as well as anecdotal examples such as your confidence/competence in this exchange may be) that corroborate the essential truth of this aspect of mind.
Of course, I may well be wrong about applying that knowledge to this scenario, so I'm not going to claim confidence or competence in applying it, just that it seemed apropos. :)
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#153"They don’t tell you that a lot of programming skill is about developing a knack for asking the right questions on Google and knowing which code is best to copy-paste." No, no, no! This always frustrates me. This is not 'coding' (maybe it is, and we should be doing less of it, and more programming). This is gluing together pre-coded snippets and trying to make it work. Continuing to do this is an impediment to gettin…
I can appreciate your opinion on this but it strikes me as a bit of a 'high horse' statement to declare that copy and paste is the wrong way to learn or advance the process of mental reasoning. At some level, we're all copying someone who came before us, unless you're working at the absolute bleeding edge.
Everybody has their own style of learning, and not everyone is at a point in their journey where poring over API docs or dropping down into a lower level makes sense for them.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know the whole story, but seeming as this was banking software I wouldn't be surprised if it was indeed written some time in the 80's or 90's and the original developers were nowhere to be found.
i know it's not your first language but since you mentioned you like to think and understand things, the correct syntax is '80s and '90s; the apostrophe is used to indicate letter omission. incidentally, my first language was basic. didn't want to omit that :)
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Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#155I have been programming a long time, and even now I often feel getting the environment set up to start something than just writing the actual code to solve the problem. Compiler versions, dependency injection configuration files (why yes, I am a Java developer, how did you guess?), build systems, source control, dependency management, library incompatibilities, setting up a test environment, setting up and configurin…
This comment really resonates with me. It is what I think of when I hear that quote,
"Technology has the shelf life of a banana". It demotivates from starting new side projects when the old ones take such efforts just to set up again. Code can give the impression that it has some timeless value like some truth that has always existed and you have captured, but in reality code cannot "exist"(or fulfill its purpose) in isolation.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Copy and paste doesn't help you at all with this. In some cases it may prevent you learning essential lessons and hinder your improvement. It annoys the heck out of me too when people apply for a programming job and cannot implement even trivial CS methods (like integer => string conversion with base N), then point out that they would just Google for a solution if they needed something like this. But to be honest,…
I have been programming professionally for 10 years, 5 years more as a hobby. I have been paid 100s of thousands of dollars, my code is used daily by 10s of thousands of people, I have built large, complex systems from scratch, worked in teams and by myself. The things I make do what they're supposed to, they don't break often[1], tend to be fast and usually my client is a happy bunny. I can fix anyone's code, even w…
> I would only have a vague idea of how to do a integer => string conversion with base N without googling it. So am I shit?
It sounds very much like it I'm afraid. This is trivial problem solving. Your overconfidence + lack of problem solving ability are big red flags. If you're as good as you claim you are then you should know foundational principles. It gives you a far greater insight into programming than just grinding away with other programmers 'snippets'.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I'm actually a little shocked HNers think regularly coping and pasting code snippets off the web is ok. That's, kind of crazy. This is bad especially for young developers (such as myself). Not to mention jeopardizing the security and integrity of your software project. I hear 'don't reinvent the wheel' often written in blogs etc. That is not good. The lazy developer would read that and go, 'oh, I dont need to k…
You seem very confident of your assessments. To the point you'll even suggest HNers who don't see things as you do are crazy. Are you aware of the notion that expressed confidence tends toward being inversely proportional to competence? And that this is a key to insightful learning? You've said you're a young developer, so perhaps you haven't recognized this aspect of mind yet, but there's plenty of solid science (as…
I didn't call anyone crazy, it's the idea of copying and pasting code into a professional project that I think is crazy.
That's how I was schooled by senior devs, whose opinion I have profound respect for. The reasoning is sound to me, I'll stick with it. Unless, someone has better reasons why I should copy and paste code, I would consider it.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#158Coding is easy. The problem is too many "teachers" expect you to have a larger vocabulary than you need. I taught 3rd graders to code. I also taught 1st graders, but the 3rd graders it really clicked. They would come up with solutions to things I would not have thought were possible given the limited language we were working in. We started in "Project Europa" it is object oriented, module based, and the vocabulary is…
> But there are a lot of ass hats who care if you should have built a function rather than copy and pasting the same code with minor variations 20 times. That larger vocabulary you sneer at is much of what allows developers to be multiplicatively productive, allows them to do much more work and do it in a faster and less error-prone way. Or, put another way: are they having to maintain your code when you get tired of…
I looked at the nightly order-processing workflow for the regional retailer I worked for one time. I was gobsmacked to find that one section of it consisted of launching the same suite of 5-6 programs one time for each of our 25 locations. And "launching" meant setting a handful of run-time variables, executing the object, waiting for it to finish running, and examining the result.
It was fairly easy to see why this happened. That workflow was the heart and soul of the company's revenue processing, and no one wanted to touch it any more than absolutely necessary, to avoid breaking anything. So when they expanded from one warehouse to two, it made more sense to simply re-iterate the existing code with the new location id. When they added another location, re-iterate it again, and so forth.
I created a Launch subroutine, then replaced all those hundreds of lines of code with a for loop that simply called the Launch subroutine for each object needed. Then I went through the rest of the workflow and swapped in Launch calls where appropriate. Overnight, that workflow became much shorter, more readable, and most importantly, significantly more maintainable. Previously, if you wanted to change what programs were run per branch, you had to insert the launching logic in twenty-five separate spots. Now? Once.
That, my friends, is why we build functions, rather than copypasta-ing the same code over and over.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
wow... You must be from the school of re-inventing the wheel... most things that need to be coded have been done before by someone else and quite well... No one chops down their own tress when they want to build a deck. They take lumber that someone else preformed and make it fit their project. If you are writing all your own code every time on every project... You must get nothing done...
Libraries yes, copypasta no. They're maintained, have tests, and a download/follower count.
'They're maintained, have tests, and a download/follower count.'
While not exactly what you're saying, I feel that a good StackOverflow answer has the same general properties.
Re: Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy
#160"They don’t tell you that a lot of programming skill is about developing a knack for asking the right questions on Google and knowing which code is best to copy-paste." No, no, no! This always frustrates me. This is not 'coding' (maybe it is, and we should be doing less of it, and more programming). This is gluing together pre-coded snippets and trying to make it work. Continuing to do this is an impediment to gettin…
> Then I'll throw them all away and code my own. Possibly it will share a lot with one of the answers, what I would consider a good approach So basically you're in the business of reinventing the wheel all the time. I feel sorry for your employer.
Although rarely, it is worth it sometimes to reinvent the wheel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Tq3Gsj6lY :-)