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A letter from _why

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Re: A letter from _why

#41

Post by officemonkey »

grimen wrote: post #29
javadyan wrote: post #6

> They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or “crappy” code. If you worry too much about being clean and tidy, you can’t push the boundaries. Yes, of course. You push the boundaries, move on, and at the end of the day, we have to maintain the stinking pile of "experiments" you left us with. Ugh.

Example: Do you paint and/or build because you feel like it, or because it pays your bills? I doubt a child got bills to pay, so why do they paint and/or build LEGO? Code can be art and play too.

I'll go even further. If you're a kid and coding isn't fun, then please stop doing it. The last thing you need is to sacrifice your career to something you don't like doing.

Re: A letter from _why

#42

Post by rbanffy »

wtracy wrote: post #26
philwelch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. why was happy to remain in the public eye long after he and his book gained notoriety. What you don't mention is his prolific open source work, including the html/xml parser hpricot. why's disappearance seemed to happen just as nokogiri, a technically superior parser, became prominent, though why's motives will never be known for sure. why's last tweets include: "caller asks, “should i use h…

"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive." ... or any sufficiently large and financially important enterprise code, really. :-(

This is like saying zombies are alive...

No. Enterprise (and enterprisey) code is born dead. With huge amount of effort, it may be coerced into walking. It also eats brains.

Re: A letter from _why

#43

Post by rbanffy »

javadyan wrote: post #17
angrycoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is encouraging a beginner to have fun and experiment, not write enterprise software.

That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces. That's bad. You should be afraid to write crappy or unsafe code. Writing clean and safe code is a mandatory skill for any programmer and beginners (especially beginners) should practise it. After all, if you want to be a programmer, eventually you will have to write code that will be used by other peop…

> That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces

You really should not be using (or maintaining) code written by beginners, should you?

Re: A letter from _why

#44

Post by javadyan »

felipemnoa wrote: post #38
gbog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't check "Why"'s code but if he is a real good writer and coder, as many seem to think, his code will be clean even against his own claims. It is only when you have the greatest maestria that you can dismiss the rules. Only after 20 years of violin will you be able to play "out of tune" (without people jumping through the windows). So I take Why's advices as very elitist, and necessary, but not to be followed t…

You are really missing the point. One of the best ways to learn is to make a lot of mistakes, in everything.

Yeah, it's important to correct those mistakes, though. And ensure that the mistakes don't go unnoticed.

Re: A letter from _why

#45

Post by javadyan »

rbanffy wrote: post #43
javadyan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces. That's bad. You should be afraid to write crappy or unsafe code. Writing clean and safe code is a mandatory skill for any programmer and beginners (especially beginners) should practise it. After all, if you want to be a programmer, eventually you will have to write code that will be used by other peop…

> That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces You really should not be using (or maintaining) code written by beginners, should you?

Yes, but that is not the point. The point is, best practices should be taught as early as possible, so that people don't acquire bad programming habits.

Re: A letter from _why

#46

Post by rbanffy »

javadyan wrote: post #45
rbanffy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces You really should not be using (or maintaining) code written by beginners, should you?

Yes, but that is not the point. The point is, best practices should be taught as early as possible, so that people don't acquire bad programming habits.

If they never make mistakes on their own, what are they really learning? Also, why are you so sure your "best practices" will remain best practices a couple years from now?

Give http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html a read and come back enlightened.

Re: A letter from _why

#47

Post by patrickg »

pygy_ wrote: post #33
jessedhillon wrote: post #4

Can someone write an explanation for why this is important? Who is this person?

He's a top notch high and low-level programmer with excellent taste for API design (and a language geek). He's also a talented poet/writer, painter/cartoonist/web designer and composer/singer/musician. From ~2002 to 2009, he released a tremendous amount of material (dozens of code projects, thousands of blog posts), then disappeared abruptly, deleting almost everything he had ever published. His blog posts were humor…

I once bought a printed Shoes manual from Lulu.com and it is the absolute best manual (from a 'I love to read this book' point of view). Extremely impressive. Guess it is already worth a few bucks today ;-)

Re: A letter from _why

#48

Post by d0m »

paganel wrote: post #19

> I admire programmers who take risks. They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or "crappy" code. I can still remember the advice a guy at least 10 times smarter than me gave me at the start of my programming career: "One of the most important things for a programmer to have is courage". At that time I couldn't fully understand what he really meant, I was thinking that REST vs. SOAP or PHP vs. Java or OO vs. Functional…

Mind to elaborate a little bit on this?

Re: A letter from _why

#49

Post by javadyan »

javadyan wrote: post #45
rbanffy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces You really should not be using (or maintaining) code written by beginners, should you?

Yes, but that is not the point. The point is, best practices should be taught as early as possible, so that people don't acquire bad programming habits.

> Also, why are you so sure your "best practices" will remain best practices a couple years from now?

It's the same as saying "but why are you so sure your science will remain science a couple years from now?". Sure, there is constant progress and change, but we have to know what is at our disposal right here, right now.

Re: A letter from _why

#50

Post by gnufied »

Those who think somehow _why is advocating writing bad code aren't paying attention:

>Twenty lines here and there and soon people will be beating you up and you’ll be scrambling to build on to those scripts and figure our your style and newer innovations and so on.

The point I think is, write (possibly bad) code and evolve. Break stuff, innovate and evolve.

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