Pro-tip: scroll down to the bottom for opinions that are actually controversial.
What's your most controversial programming opinion?
31–40 of 53 posts
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#32Some people made me realise lately that this is actually controversial: If your function is over half screen long and it's not gui initialisation, you're doing it wrong.
Also: One line code comments in front of a block of code should actually be converted into function calls that execute the described functionality. (comment is made redundant)
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#33I wrote a blog post awhile back that was really controversial. It was about code ownership. People were split down the middle on hating code ownership or loving it. I think some people even took it to mean actual owning of the code.
I was coming from kind of a dictator view where I accept patches rather than blindingly letting people commit changes to projects i'm responsible for.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#34Mine is I don't believe single-entry single-exit should be law. It tends to clutter your code with extra braces.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#35It's 2010 and we're still running a lot of native code with no OS-enforced sanity checks on pointer arithmetic or types or capability tokens. "Crash" and "boot" are "virus" are phenomena the general public have become familiar with. Someday we're going to look back on all this as grotesquely stupid, even negligent.
(But I can't see a path from here to there. Especially one that involves getting paid to write an OS worth using.)
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#36Here's mine: to a first approximation, code quality is unimportant. Rapid iteration is what matters.
I've seen lots of failed projects with smart, super-conscientious developers, who wouldn't write a method without a test. And others with programmers that frequently copied code, used globals for side effects, basically did everything they tell you not to do, but they produced programs that people loved using.
The difference was rapid iteration with real customers. This flushed out important bugs, even with code that was written in a way that was prone to be buggy. But more importantly, the developers quickly understood the product in a more global sense -- what was relevant to users and what wasn't. I suspect rapid iteration can turn even mediocre developers into stars.
It's important to recognize that good practices are about tradeoffs. The truly good developer is not the one that never copies code; it's the one that knows when it is the more fruitful course of action. So in a way, you need to be brilliant to get away with being sloppy.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a few years ago Javascript had a horrible reputation. It's funny how the more people learn Javascript, the more it is considered as a great language. I guess it's some form of Stockholm syndrome.
Or, alternatively, the more people who learn Javascript learn it's actually really good.
Well, for a want of a lisp... In a way, Javascript is a "lisp in C clothes". Purely as a language, though; in practice, this idea has not been followed through.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#38The top items don't seem to be very controversial, but instead seem to be "things that good programmers think are true, and bad ones don't." Here's mine: if you haven't gone through a respectable 4 year CS program, odds are I'm not going to want to hire you since your brain isn't wired to think about algorithms and data structures instead of code and servers.
Surely there's a more direct way to determine how someone's brain is wired? Have a conversation with them about some algorithm or data structure. A four-year CS program is definitely not the only way to learn that sort of thing.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#39So can we assume that the most highly-voted are actual the least controversial? This is kind of interesting.
Not quite - the most controversial are the ones with both high upvotes and downvotes, with a ratio closest to 1:1.
Re: What's your most controversial programming opinion?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a few years ago Javascript had a horrible reputation. It's funny how the more people learn Javascript, the more it is considered as a great language. I guess it's some form of Stockholm syndrome.
Or, alternatively, the more people who learn Javascript learn it's actually really good.
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