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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

(chriskiehl.com)
873 points belter | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 09:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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GuB-42 ◴[05 Feb 25 13:47 UTC] No.42948407[source]▶
Just personal opinions, I guess, I agree with most, but here are some I disagree with:

- 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.

- Java is a great language because it's boring

That is if you write Java the boring way. A lot of Java code (looking at you Spring) is everything but boring, and it is not fun either.

- Most programming should be done long before a single line of code is written

I went the opposite extreme. That is, if you are not writing code, you are not programming. If you are not writing code on your first day your are wasting time. It is a personal opinion, but the idea is that without doing something concrete, i.e. writing code, it is too easy to lose track of the reality, the reality being that in the end, you will have a program that runs on a machine. It doesn't mean you will have to keep that code.

- Formal modeling and analysis is an essential skill set

Maybe that explains our difference with regard to the last point. Given the opportunity, I prefer try stuff rather than formalize. It is not that formal modeling is useless, it is just less essential to me than experimentation. To quote Don Knuth out of context: "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." ;)

- You literally cannot add too many comments to test code (I challenge anyone to try)

time++; // increment time

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do_not_redeem ◴[05 Feb 25 15:18 UTC] No.42949655[source]▶
> time++; // increment time

This isn't too many comments, it's a poor quality comment. Try:

time++; // advance 1 simulated second

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bluGill ◴[05 Feb 25 15:26 UTC] No.42949812[source]▶
What is wrong with

   time++;
That seem obvious enough to me without any comments.
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smallerfish ◴[05 Feb 25 16:17 UTC] No.42950683[source]▶
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.

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vunderba ◴[05 Feb 25 18:13 UTC] No.42952723[source]▶
Pedantic but a comment clarifying the unit of measurement belongs with the declaration of the variable, not an increment statement.
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1. tialaramex ◴[06 Feb 25 14:29 UTC] No.42962621[source]▶
The problem, in this case, is that the correct size of the increment involves the unit of measurement. If we change the unit of measurement and go update your comment on the declaration of the variable, now everywhere which uses the variable is wrong.

    int time; // in seconds
    /* thousands of lines away or in another file */
    time += 1;
Later we change the time to be in milliseconds. We update the comment on the declaration, but now that code is wrong and we have no reason to know that.

That's a bad choice, languages should do better (and some do - where they do, use the better features and this problem vanishes) but when it's forced upon us it makes sense to either put the unit in the name of the variable or ensure comments about changes to the variable explain the units consistently, even though that's lots of work. This extra work was dumped on you by the language.