The Grug Brained Developer (2022)

might be some good points in here but it's sooo hard to read.

It isn't as skimmable as some other writing styles, but if you read it one word at a time (either aloud or "in your head"), it's not too bad.

https://reidjs.github.io/grug-dev-translation/ :)

(no affiliation, I enjoy the original and wish for it to reach as many people as possible)

RIP phone readers.

I like it. Grug is grammatically incorrect but concise, which forces my Big Brain to step back, allowing my Grug Brain to slowly absorb the meaning of each word.

Works great in reader mode! Better than most actually.

Grug use few words, make it easy read grug.

Sometimes if I'm reading something and having trouble with the words or sentences, I'll slow down and focus on the individual letters. Usually helps a tremendous amount.

Since you're being downvoted I just wanted to say I agree. I'm sure it was cathartic to write but it's not a good way to actually communicate.

Also like a lot of programming advice it isn't actually that useful. Advice like "avoid complexity" sounds like it is good advice, but it isn't good advice. Of course you should avoid complexity. Telling people to do that is about as useful as telling people to "be more confident".

We mostly learn to avoid complexity through trial and error - working on complex and simple systems, seeing the pitfalls, specific techniques to avoid complexity, what specific complexity is bad, etc. Because not all complexity is bad. You want simplicity? Better trade in you Zen 4 and buy a Cortex M0. And I hope you aren't running a modern OS on it.

Ok "avoid unnecessary complexity"? Great how exactly do you know what's unnecessary? Years of experience that's how. Nothing you can distill to a gimmicky essay.

Apologies if I came across as condescending.

The medium is the message though.

Yeah that's the point, to communicate the idea that some complexity is unnecessary, and we should beware of it, instead of just accepting wholesale whatever complexity is handed to us, like many in this industry do.

Good one....I put it into Claude with a prompt to not change the meaning but make it more normal

Grug is an obvious misspelling of the name Greg, similar to how HTMX is a misspelling of HTML

It actually might be a psychological trick to make readers slow down and try to comprehend fully what is written. So, making something hard to read on purpose to get better comprehension

This grugbrain not think your words condescending.

I raise you "premature optimization is the root of all evil". Great advice, so good in fact that it's true for literally anything: "premature X is the root of all evil".

If it's "unnecessary" or "premature", then of course it's bad. I don't need to be told that. What I do need is advice on telling apart the unnecessary and premature from the necessary and timely.

Totally agree! I think that one is actually a net negative because it's mostly used as an excuse not to think about performance at all.

"Oh we don't need to think about performance when deciding the fundamental architecture of our system because everyone knows premature optimization is the root of all evil."

Not at all! No offense was taken.