I realized this after going from a floundering late-stage startup with very high code quality to a hyper-growth startup with lower code quality, but much more engaged engineers focused on shipping.
Nobody cares about your clean code
71–80 of 177 posts
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#72"throw the first one away" When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, I don't write tests, I don't comment/document much, I use lots of shitty variable/type names, lots of commented out code, debugging printfs, not much organization of files (often one large file). The prototype software is write-once, read-maybe. Maybe I'll want to see what I did down the road, but more likely I'll be shortly rewriting what…
When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, it eventually becomes production. I cannot relate to people who make prototypes to throw away, I've never done it, and I don't know why I'd do it. Due to that, I write my first line of code as if it's going to be on production forever, because it will.
> I've never done it, and I don't know why I'd do it.
The original waterfall paper[1] advocated for doing an initial version, by which point you'll have understood the problem domain (in miniature) enough to make a better attempt by throwing it all away and reassessing what tradeoffs make sense.
> Without this simulation the project manager is at the mercy of human judgment. With the simulation he can at least perform experimental tests of some key hypotheses and scope down what remains for human judgment, which in the area of computer program design (as in the estimation of takeoff gross weight, costs to complete, or the daily double) is invariably and seriously optimistic. [2]
The myth goes that someone in the Department of Defense looked at the first diagram (which the author claims right underneath is flawed), copied it in a rush for a diagram and that became enshrined in history as "How best to develop software" until agile and what not
[1]: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970... [2]: Page 7 of the above PDF
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#73"throw the first one away" When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, I don't write tests, I don't comment/document much, I use lots of shitty variable/type names, lots of commented out code, debugging printfs, not much organization of files (often one large file). The prototype software is write-once, read-maybe. Maybe I'll want to see what I did down the road, but more likely I'll be shortly rewriting what…
When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, it eventually becomes production. I cannot relate to people who make prototypes to throw away, I've never done it, and I don't know why I'd do it. Due to that, I write my first line of code as if it's going to be on production forever, because it will.
I can relate to both of you. It just depends on size and complexity of the project.
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#74If you don't care about clean code, you don't care about collaboration. Projects that don't care about collaboration don't scale.
Projects (and companies) that never ship or ship too late also don't scale.
In my experience, it's much easier to overbuild than it is to underbuild.
I definitely agree that collaboration is essential though!
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#75Why would this blog disable text selection? What an obnoxious UX choice.
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#76uhm, except for the fools you employ to maintain them
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#77I don't understand why it's surprising to anyone that not every project needs the same approach to software engineering. Complex tasks need much more careful design than simple ones.
The million dollar home page made a million dollars and was probably a single file of PHP.
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#78"throw the first one away" When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, I don't write tests, I don't comment/document much, I use lots of shitty variable/type names, lots of commented out code, debugging printfs, not much organization of files (often one large file). The prototype software is write-once, read-maybe. Maybe I'll want to see what I did down the road, but more likely I'll be shortly rewriting what…
When I'm prototyping or hacking something together, it eventually becomes production. I cannot relate to people who make prototypes to throw away, I've never done it, and I don't know why I'd do it. Due to that, I write my first line of code as if it's going to be on production forever, because it will.
I use to write a prototype and rewrite, before I worked in startups. Now days I write once and it’s in prod within a couple of days. It has taken some adjustments, to be sure, my first ~6 months was full of submitting little mistakes that I normally would have caught in the rewrites.
Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#79If you don't care about clean code, you don't care about collaboration. Projects that don't care about collaboration don't scale.
Projects (and companies) that never ship or ship too late also don't scale. In my experience, it's much easier to overbuild than it is to underbuild. I definitely agree that collaboration is essential though!
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Re: Nobody cares about your clean code
#80Author seems like a jealous and insecure person