Software engineers hate code • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineers hate code

#21

Post by XorNot » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

elygre wrote: post #12

usrbinbash wrote: post #6

> Don't write new code when you can use, improve or fix what already exists. If you must write new code, write only what you need to get the job done. While the article resonates with me alot, I would like to, in the best spirit of the article, propose an addendum to that line: When modifying existing code, do a very careful cost-benefit analysis; On the one side is the cost of a rebuild. On the other side is the pro…

I notice that on your “one side”, you have the cost of the rebuild — but not the “projected cost of keeping this thing and maintaining it”. That’s a common fallacy of programming: the existing code is convoluted and hard ti maintain, but the new code I would replace it with will be much better and much cheaper to maintain.

Conversely...in a lot of cases you can reasonably project it's likely you won't be maintaining it. So what you're really projecting is how much trouble you expect to save yourself for your forseeable remaining time at the company.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#22

Post by m3kw9 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #6

> Don't write new code when you can use, improve or fix what already exists. If you must write new code, write only what you need to get the job done. While the article resonates with me alot, I would like to, in the best spirit of the article, propose an addendum to that line: When modifying existing code, do a very careful cost-benefit analysis; On the one side is the cost of a rebuild. On the other side is the pro…

Reusing code cause issues if you are not very careful because if not checked people often keep adding to it or someone modified it for their use case and breaks others. Many times is just better not to reuse

Re: Software engineers hate code

#23

Post by jrochkind1 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

But do they actually want to read the code on the existing project, or just write new code adding to it?

Nothing is universal, but I think often the latter.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#24

Post by jrochkind1 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

nixpulvis wrote: post #4

This is like writing “mechanics hate bolts”. Yea, mechanics love to complain about metric and imperial sizes and when they don’t thread in correctly, but at the end of the day a good mechanic loves seeing a smooth running car. Similarly, a good software engineer loves it when they have a smooth running service. Updates work without hiccup and the system can be inspected to see how things are running. Having clean and…

What percentage of code you have worked with in your career is that beautiful code that you love to work with?

To make it more fair, code you wrote yourself doesn't count, because you aren't an objective observer -- and more importantly, have a different relationship to it making it easier to work with since you wrote it, and often to your own preferences.

I think I agree with you, it's just that... the actual way software is written doesn't seem to allow for much clean and maintainable and easily extensible code to be written, so I'm not sure how much it matters practically.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#25

Post by bayindirh » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

I think it's a spectrum. For example I like writing new code and designing new things, but I don't hate or dislike my or other people's old code.

That code also has been written by a human, and it's disrespectful to approach somebody else's work with this prejudice.

It might not be good code, by our standards, but who knows how it was written. Was the author under stress, under time obligations, or happy, or something else?

Also, being able to approach somebody else's code and work with it is humbling and deeply educative for me. You get a (free) passage to a wisdom of a person or a group. That's priceless.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#26

Post by bayindirh » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #23

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

But do they actually want to read the code on the existing project, or just write new code adding to it? Nothing is universal, but I think often the latter.

Well, I'm currently trying to reverse engineer something done by an open source SaaS offering, to patch a tool written by another person which works with that part I'm trying to reverse.

I just wanted to use the tool without any effort, but I have to understand the interface and patch the tool to make it work again. I'm not complaining.

Just wanted to add a data point for the former part of your comment.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#27

Post by WJW » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

Indeed! This phenomenon has been a great source of freelancing customers for me.

Startups naturally thrive on an early team that loves building new things, but the flip side is that they rarely seem to go back to fix existing stuff. That leaves a gap for people like me, who prefer to take something that works poorly and make it bulletproof. For some reason this quite often seems to involve db access patterns but there's a fair bit of algorithms work too. Usually the "building new things" engineers are quite happy to let me take over the investigation into why the 150 line SQL query is slow, so it's a win-win.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#28

Post by dfcowell » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

This is a really great point, and it’s awesome when a team strikes the right balance. In my experience these engineers tend to be rarer than the group I talk about in this post, but when you find them they’re worth their weight in gold!

Re: Software engineers hate code

#29

Post by WJW » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #23

JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

But do they actually want to read the code on the existing project, or just write new code adding to it? Nothing is universal, but I think often the latter.

Depends on the project and the person I guess. The trust of your manager is tremendously important. N=1 here, but at my current client it took me several hours of staring at a huge SQL query before I understood why it wasn't fast but the client was trusting enough that it was time well spent. I've also has PMs who could barely understand the concept of refactoring at all.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#30

Post by dfcowell » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #6

> Don't write new code when you can use, improve or fix what already exists. If you must write new code, write only what you need to get the job done. While the article resonates with me alot, I would like to, in the best spirit of the article, propose an addendum to that line: When modifying existing code, do a very careful cost-benefit analysis; On the one side is the cost of a rebuild. On the other side is the pro…

This is a really good addition, and something I wish I’d thought to cover. I’ve added a link back to this HN thread to the post so that people who find it from other sources can benefit from your perspective!