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Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

neilkakkar.com

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Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#191

Post by teddyh »

dotancohen wrote: post #186
teddyh wrote: post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

> Nobody expects to learn much about a person by their name. This is wrong. If I tell you that I just hired a mathematician, a farmhand, and a nurse, you could probably guess which person was which when I introduce you to Vladimir, Jebbediah, and Sofia. Names are a reflection of culture, and certain cultures tend towards certain professions. No politically-correct dreams will change that unless we instill a universal…

> Names are a reflection of culture, and certain cultures tend towards certain professions.

They key word there is “tend”. Since it’s not an absolute, it would be unfair and ultimately disadvantageous of anyone to pre-judge individual people based on their name, since it is not a guarantee.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#192

Post by xorcist »

philwelch wrote: post #52
teddyh wrote: post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

If you designate your servers with numbers or meaningless identifiers instead of names, you also won't ever feel guilty about killing and replacing them. I believe this is (somewhat gruesomely) called the "pets vs. livestock" approach.

It is also misguided. Not only do people get attached just as easily to meaningless identifiers, but when stripped of their mening people are more likely to re-use identifiers, not less.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#193

Post by aspaceman »

Scarblac wrote: post #180
harrisonjackson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it depends on who is creeping. A junior engineer, I'd probably pull them up and start explaining what is going on. A fellow senior engineer I'd probably take a welcome break and ask them to grab a coffee - the only reason they'd be lurking lol. If it is a PM or someone else it might put me on edge - likely because they wouldn't have the context to understand what I was working on and if they didn't say anythi…

So in all three cases, your focus is gone and what you were doing has stopped.

Helping a junior and maintaining relationships with your fellow seniors is a part of the job too.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#194

Post by xorcist »

rileymat2 wrote: post #53
teddyh wrote: post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

I am not understanding why the machine name could not be changed when it's purpose changed? Is an immutable name unique to that environment?

It is a good idea not to re-use host names. Otherwise you may encounter soft fails if the old name is still accessible, especially in systems outside of your control. If there are certificates generated it will also guarantee that they can not be re-used. So it is a good rule of thumb in larger organizations.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#195

Post by NotUsingLinux »

The article as the comments here read very strange. Like a place where there is no place for people. There can be space (real physical as well as a culture) for people, lets give team human a try. Please let's not be working drones that optimize towards questionable goals...

https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/team-human/id114033181...

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#196

Post by kissgyorgy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #33
teddyh wrote: post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

Naming standards are the ultimate bikeshedding event. Everyone has an opinion and camps develop for various schemes. The last time this happened, I happened to be in a position of influence for the final decision for naming standards. We took an approach designed to piss off everyone... license plates. We used sequential numbers prepended by a pronounceable string, and random words, selected by a system, for internal…

> Naming standards are the ultimate bikeshedding event.

I hope you never write a single line of code with this mentality...

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#197

Post by WatchDog »

lonelappde wrote: post #71
WatchDog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one appreciate good humour in a codebase.

Ah, but do you appreciate bad humour?

No not really, but I also don't appreciate bad code, and I encounter a vast amount more bad code than I do bad humour in the course of my work.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#198

Post by Moru »

jchook wrote: post #106
lonelappde wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upthread we have someone boasting about naming their business machines after porn stars.

I had to learn the hard way

I worked with home support for an ISP. A few times I was at a customer helping with a router and the mother call her son to get the password for the router. Not always a nice password...

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#199

Post by OJFord »

pkrotich wrote: post #115
OJFord wrote: post #81

> in my team culture it’s not frowned upon to “snoop behind” people writing code. Whenever I sensed something interesting going on, I’d roll around and watch what was happening. Agh, I'd hate that. In fact if anything interesting had been going on on my screen it would immediately stop, no way I could work with someone watching. I struggle enough at desks with my back to a door or where people walk by, just can't sto…

So how do you handle pair programming? It’s almost the same thing to me.

I've never worked at an org or on a team with an explicit 'we do pair programming', but in general if someone wants to explicitly start watching while ai walk through something, or have me watch whilethey show me something and we figure something out together, that's fine.

I will fumble the keys and be much slower if I'm the one being watched, but I'm fine with that because I know they're there and they asked.

I'd still be bothered by others walking past behind us while the person who came over to 'pair program' (if I can call what we're doing that) watches and doesn't bother me.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#200

Post by jmpeax »

jchook wrote: post #61
philwelch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's okay to be funny in test cases. For instance, my test data has included the user-agent string, "The Thrilla In Mozilla".

As long as you don't go into potentially offensive humor

Isn't there like a law or razor or something named after someone that says all humor will one day be offensive?
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