Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

Post by philwelch » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

dgritsko wrote: post #246

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".

I've certainly read apocryphal stories (perhaps on HN, can't remember) about offensive data being used in test cases "as a joke" and due to a variety of reasons having that data end up in production systems (visible to customers). I'm all for a bit of humor, but it's worth thinking about the issues that might be caused were your fake data to wind up on a production site.

Post by philwelch » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #188

bitwize wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone trots out that old analogy, I think of my uncle who has a small dairy farm in the U.S. midwest with over 50 head of cattle. He gave each one a name, and when one is sick, he cares for it until it is better if possible.

I know of a man with over 50 children. I'm friendly with his neighbour, who has almost 40. 50 is a number that a human can still care for and love each one individually. NB: Yes, I know that the Wikipedia list of "people with many children" makes 50 look like a record-breaking number. That list is Western-centric. Though 50 is a huge number of children even by Arab standards, it is not unheard of.

Post by Izkata » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

heinrichhartman wrote: post #24

honkycat wrote: post #12

Just to toss in my two cents about testing: Unit tests are for refactoring and declaring behaviour. Additionally, a lot of people have made the same observation: Code that is easy to unit test tends to be more modular and have better architecture. If you are struggling to test a function, think about how you can change your design to make testing easier. It will probably improve your code quality. Integration tests a…

I have heard this so many times: > Comments: I find comments, outside of docstrings, a smell. But is this really the case? I find comments like these invaluable: /* * Mark walreceiver as running in shared memory. * * Do this as early as possible, so that if we fail later on, we'll set * state to STOPPED. If we die before this, the startup process will keep * waiting for us to start up, until it times out. */ SpinLock…

  // foo = 12345

  doThing1(12345, 5) // foo
  doThing2(12345, 8) // foo

Post by OJFord » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #99

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…

I've read that in feng shui what you describe is called the "command position". I'm not able to work with my back to a crowd. That's a recipe for anxiety. I quit a company when they moved my desk so my back was to a hallway, and refused to compromise on this issue in any way.

Post by the_jeremy » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #153

Spooky23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm in Denmark, it has been my experience that the most common naming scheme (I would say omnipresent naming scheme almost) is to use the old Norse Pantheon for names.