211–220 of 552 posts
Hopefully someone can learn from this before they spin a complex web that becomes a huge effort to untangle.
This is why I make lists. Of everything. Checklists for technical processes (work and personal). Checklists for travel. Little "how to" docs on pretty much everything I do that I'm sure I won't remember past a week. It completely removes the stress of doing things repeatedly. I recently had to do something I hadn't done in 2 years. Yep, the checklist/doc on it was 95% correct, but it was no problem fixing the 5%.
In like Apple Notes or what do you store the checklists in?
Why so? It is always in front of you, it reminds you what you need to do and does not get out of sight, which helps keep the focus.
When you bury it or set it somewhere else it is very easy to bury it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mort is happy with an if soup. Amanda sees what the if soup ought to do and replaces it with a simple state machine and fixes two bugs along the way.
Wouldn't refactoring the if soup into an algorithmically elegant solution what the Einstein does ?
I appreciate both for different reasons.
This article reminds me of my early days at Microsoft. I spent 8 years in the Developer Division (DevDiv). Microsoft had three personas for software engineers that were eventually retired for a much more complex persona framework called people in context (the irony in relation to this article isn’t lost on me). But those original personas still stick with me and have been incredibly valuable in my career to understan…
Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.
Am I missing a reference? If not, may I suggest “Ada”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Or even better, “Grace”. Seems to fit your description better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.
Mort: Someone who lacks sense of life, looks dumbfounded, and has only a limited ability to learn and understand. (urban slang) Elvis: A famous rock star Enstein: A famous physicist Amanda: ??? Mort, Elvis, Enstein are referencing things I've heard of before. What is Amanda referencing? is there some famous person named Amanda? Is it slang I'm unaware of?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.
Mort, Elvis, Einstein, Amanda does seem to fit well with my experience. While people are a mix, generally I think its fair that there is a primary focus/mode that fits on career goals. - Mort wants to climb the business ladder. - Elvis wants earned social status. - Einstein wants legacy with unique contributions. - Amanda just wants group cohesion and minimizing future unpredictability.
I have been most of my career working with C++. You all may know C++ can be as complex as you want and even more clever.
Unless I really need it, and this is very few times, I always ask myself: will this code be easy to understand for others? And I avoid the clever way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I'd say that codebases nowadays usually have too many abstractions.
Some certainly do. I have also noticed that the format of the code and structure used depend more on tools and hardware the developer uses rather than some philosophical ideal. A programmer with a big monitor could prefer big blocks of uninterrupted code with long variable names. Because of the big screen area, they can see the whole outline and understand the flow of this long chunk of code. Someone on a small 13" l…
And let's face it, 95% of software isn't exactly novel.