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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

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Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#571

Post by Izkata »

dhosek wrote: post #523
polishdude20 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think it would be really cool to tie code sections to slack conversations or emails. There's always commit messages yes, but most product decisions on why something was done lives in slack at least where I've worked. Even an AI tool that takes a slack thread and summarizes how that thread informed the code would be cool to try.

I always fight to get this stuff into JIRA (or whatever equivalent tool we’re using), and then make sure that all commits have the JIRA ID in them.

Works great until you're not using it anymore. We're on our third system, all the cases from the first one and most from the second one are long since gone. Meanwhile the commit messages survive it all, even across cvs -> svn and svn -> git migrations.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#572

Post by mr_tristan »

smj-edison wrote: post #538
mr_tristan wrote: post #383

This list does resonate, but I’d make some tweaks to express things slightly better. For example: > Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written I would say “most engineering should be done before a single line of production code is written”. Formalizing a “draft process” is something I’m really trying to sell to my team. We work in an old codebase - like, it’s now older than most of t…

Sort of tangent, but is there a semi automated way to select which engineer would be best to implement a ticket? Something like "we need to modify this API, let's run git blame and see who has the most familiarity" and some form of scheduler that prioritizes the most experienced engineers on the parts of code that only they know?

Not that I know of.

I do think you could do some analysis to associate code with implementers and create graphs, where you account for additional things like time. I could see LLMs being helpful in maybe doing part of that analysis. But I would use that to see where the biggest "bus factor" is, i.e., finding subsystems where there's really only one active contributor.

For planning or task assignment, it might just help to say "ask X for more detail" when there's no other docs or your LLM is spewing jibberish about a topic

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#573

Post by mr_tristan »

drbawb wrote: post #423
mr_tristan wrote: post #383

This list does resonate, but I’d make some tweaks to express things slightly better. For example: > Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written I would say “most engineering should be done before a single line of production code is written”. Formalizing a “draft process” is something I’m really trying to sell to my team. We work in an old codebase - like, it’s now older than most of t…

>They think the process is “senior make ticket, anyone implement ticket, unga bunga”. The fact that you just summarized about an hour worth of argumentation from my last annual planning meeting with that one sentence has just destroyed me. I kneel. At this precise moment in time, if anybody seriously thought the above was the way the process works or should work, they should be advocating for firing all the juniors a…

> At this precise moment in time, if anybody seriously thought the above was the way the process works or should work, they should be advocating for firing all the juniors and replacing them with LLMs.

Sadly, I think this is happening at some places. Like Salesforce. Sigh

https://www.ktvu.com/news/salesforce-cutting-1000-jobs-hirin...

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#574

Post by Izkata »

asalahli wrote: post #548

> You literally cannot add too many comments to test code In my opinion, almost every developer I've worked with who advocated for generous amounts of comments has overestimated their (and or others') ability to write good quality comments. Obvious ones like `a = b; // set a to b` while useless are also mostly harmless, but I've been lead astray by outright factually wrong comments, many more times than I can count.…

I suspect they mean in tests, not in general code as hints about testing. A comment block that explains a bit why that test is doing what it's doing can be amazing.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#575

Post by bellBivDinesh »

hliyan wrote: post #68
latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

There's another way to look at this: if you consider the school of thought that says that the code is the design, and compilation is the construction process, then stressing over code style is equivalent to stressing over the formatting and conventions of the blueprint (to use a civil engineering metaphor), instead of stressing over load bearing, material costs and utility of the space. I'm fond of saying that anythi…

So writing brittle code that’s impossible to change isn’t a failure of design? It can still compile and run just fine

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#576

Post by stickfigure »

GuB-42 wrote: post #428
coldpie wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - There is no pride in managing or understanding complexity > Complexity exists, you can't make it go away, managing it and understanding it is the only thing you can do. Simple systems only displace complexity. I interpreted that one as a suggestion to avoid welcoming needless complexity because of the false sense of pride it gives you to successfully manage that complexity. To give an example, I believe C++'s end…

C++ complexity exists for a reason. It does a lot of things and these things are useful, if not necessary for those who use it. I can't think of any language that can replace C++ completely. Plenty can replace C++ incompletely, but then you would need another language for the leftovers, that's displacing complexity. There are modern languages trying to eat C++ lunch, like Zig and Rust, but you don't get decades of ba…

> C++ complexity exists for a reason.

Yeah, because Bjarne was figuring it out as he went. Which is fair, he was treading new ground. But C++ would have turned out a lot better if he'd taken a lot more vacation time.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#577

Post by igouy »

9rx wrote: post #439
igouy wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J ... J ... Java.

Patrick Naughton came from the Smalltalk world, so Java is definitely inspired by Smalltalk, but he didn't bring along the oriented bits. Its object model is a lot closer to C++'s. To have objects does not imply orientation.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#578

Post by stickfigure »

bluGill wrote: post #390
smallerfish wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it ms? seconds? days? weeks? months? How far up do I have to read to figure that out? When I'm looking at a test case is broken, I ideally want context IN the actual test that lets me understand what the test author was thinking when they wrote it. Why does this test exist as it does? Why are the expectations that are in place valid? Write the comments for you-in-2-years.

Do you not know the conventions of your project? Doesn't your project have a convention that all time is in ms (second, weeks...)? If your project doesn't have that convention such that everyone knows than the code should be timeMs++; You may also have a time type and so you can use your IDE to examine the type.

> Do you not know the conventions of your project?

I just started yesterday! No, I don't.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#579

Post by jacksnipe »

latexr wrote: post #22

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are > (…) > People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things. What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not neces…

I care about the craft of constructing programs. I do not care about the craft of typesetting them.

Re: Software development topics I've changed my mind on

#580

Post by stickfigure »

rovolo wrote: post #567
bluGill wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not know the conventions of your project? Doesn't your project have a convention that all time is in ms (second, weeks...)? If your project doesn't have that convention such that everyone knows than the code should be timeMs++; You may also have a time type and so you can use your IDE to examine the type.

I agree that the time unit should be in the variable name. The code itself should do a good job of explaining "what" is happening, but you generally need comments to explain "why" this code exists. Why is the test advancing the time, and why are we advancing the time at this line of the test? networkTimeMs++; // Callback occurs after timeout timeSec++; // Advance time to check whether dependent properties update utcT…

> I agree that the time unit should be in the variable name

Also a terrible solution!

The code suffers from primitive obsession. Unless you're in a code section that is known to have performance issues, use real types.

    time = time.plusMilliseconds(1);
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