The Pragmatic Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: The Pragmatic Programmer

#21

Post by richcollins » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:09 PM UTC

DanI-S wrote: post #18

GUIs prevent truly proficient programming I /hate/ this line of thinking. Do we really think that the perfect way to interact with a computer was somehow stumbled upon in the 1970s and can never be improved upon? The computer does not think in ASCII, WE do not think in ASCII - it's no less of an abstraction than any other form of GUI. Like the colour syntax highlighting in your vim setup? Fond of autocompletion? Enjo…

I agree. Nothing worse than having to cram your working memory full of arcane commands when you could be using it to help solve the problem at hand.

Re: The Pragmatic Programmer

#22

Post by DanI-S » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:09 PM UTC

dwc wrote: post #20

DanI-S wrote: post #18

GUIs prevent truly proficient programming I /hate/ this line of thinking. Do we really think that the perfect way to interact with a computer was somehow stumbled upon in the 1970s and can never be improved upon? The computer does not think in ASCII, WE do not think in ASCII - it's no less of an abstraction than any other form of GUI. Like the colour syntax highlighting in your vim setup? Fond of autocompletion? Enjo…

Do check out the book. It's full of very good things. > stumbled upon in the 1970s and can never be improved upon Certainly it can be improved upon, and I'm pretty sure even GUI haters must know that. We're just waiting for that to happen, and maybe trying to think how to make it happen. The big schism comes because there are "GUI people" who think it's the total answer to everything, if only we can make better widge…

Indeed; the other pole is just as bad. I'm guessing at some point they're going to meet in the middle and something wonderful will be born. If I could create great software by staring into a flashing light whilst waving my arms around and humming, I'd be all for it - but we have a ways to go yet.

Re: The Pragmatic Programmer

#23

Post by svlla » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:21 PM UTC

This book is like a self-help book... it mostly makes you feel good, otherwise mostly worthless. People who like this book are probably bad programmers.

Re: The Pragmatic Programmer

#24

Post by diego_moita » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:42 PM UTC

This book is worth reading even for veteran programmers; there are a few good parts in it: the orthogonality idea, the DRY principle in all its implications, etc.

It's not the definitive book, if there will ever be one. But is a good reading.

Re: The Pragmatic Programmer

#25

Post by dwc » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #17

barrkel wrote: post #4

I found the book underwhelming after all the praise I had read of it, because it seemed little more than a collection of common knowledge - I didn't get much out of it. On the other hand, for people very new to the craft, it may be more valuable for precisely the same reason.

A lot of the chapters are just a "word soup" with a bunch of motivational words and vague admonitions. For such a non-technical and imprecise book, I'm surprised how widely lauded it is among software engineers.

For me, the "word soup" was the authors trying to get across why they did the specific things they did. While many of the individual practices are widely known today, knowing the underlying why is the only way to get real value out of the techniques or to let you know when you should abandon or adapt them.