Reflections On A Decade Of Coding | Prime Reacts

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[madlep]

There’s a sweet spot about 2-4 years into your programming career when you know everything. I miss those days.

[meltygear]

Hot take: Linux kernel was also created for funzies, and people should be doing funzies far more often. You don't get to choose what's gonna become big.

[-ciii-]

A: "It's pronounced sequel!"
B: "No way, it's S-Q-L!"
The Primeagen: "Squeal"

[kippie]

Been programming for 28 years. Lots of different things and jobs. Many changes, many things the same. Glad to see new people thinking about simplifying program stacks. Am enjoying learning RUST for bear metal and for fun, use on old architectures like 68000.

[dpmadness]

Having worked in a startup where I was the only senior and the other 3 devs were junior-mid level. I passionately agree with limiting the size of functions. I arrived at the company at the decision of the 3rd app re-write. Upon observation 1) deeply nested class inheritance 2) insanely complex control flow statements...like 4 nested if conditons on average per function 3) Very large functions that made unjustified super() calls to the parent classes like 5 levels up.

The hell was inexplicable. You give a 2 year old a box of markers with no rules and you can bet they'll pop the top off every single one and draw EVERYWHERE, sofa and all. So you give them one marker and limit the drawing to one paper.

We limited the functions to a max of 20 lines. And trust me...the code was much more maintainable and predicatable.

Working with a group of seniors who should 'know better' I would not suggest the advice of limiting the max size of a function, so I can see how people don't get it...but it's all about context...just find the advice that matches your context.

[isaacfife]

Loved this one! Especially the points about decision fatigue, and also that bad feeling you get where your intuition from tacit knowledge is telling you this code is a mistake, but you have to go think about it for a while to figure out why.

[briandawley]

Learn by failure vs. learn by doing things right. YES YES YES!!!

Some academics are pushing for "fail forward" for kids (or anyone, but mostly kids). Our academic institutions put so much pressure on kids/learners to "get it right the first time." But really, the important thing isn't get it right the first time, but get it *eventually*. I'm 100% with you on the, learn by failure. That's such a better teacher than, take a test and see you failed and now your grade is irreparably harmed.

[Fleshy]

The whole series is fantastic... you should definitely go through them all (some are shorter than others).

[CamembertDave]

I think the most important take in the article is that there is more value "in specific experience reports or in watching people actually working, as opposed to writing about general principles."

This also answers Prime's point/question at the end: "sometimes you have to decide whether you want to write with nuance vs you write just with general principles" - always take the side of nuance. The idea of general principles may be alluring, but it's ultimately a trap, because the principles most likely won't be general (I think the article makes a strong case for this last point).

[gabereiser]

Just wait till you’ve been coding for 25 years… “wtf is this? A quantum tuple?”

[TheCredibleHulk]

6:17 lol are we the same person? I call my dressing regiment "the conveyor belt". It's a fully automated system, where all of my daily/work clothes are being worn on a modified FIFO schedule. No decisions, no exceptions. I simply wear the next thing that's on the hanger at the front of the queue. If at the end of the day the shirt is still good, it goes back to it's 1st spot to be worn again the next day. That cycle repeats until it needs to go in the laundry. All freshly washed clothes go towards the back of the hanger queue. Repeat.


As a result, my clothes look great cos I never over-wear anything (as clothes that are being washed too often quickly turn to shit). All I had to do is make sure that all of my pants and shorts match my shirts, tshits and sweaters. Easy peasy. Never have to make any dressing decisions again.

And I also consistently look good, every single day. Sure, I may not look like some style icon (nor do I ever want to, F kill me if I ever do), but I do look clean & well put together. That's all that I want my clothes to do - make me look good, but mostly get out of the way and don't waste my time.

[colin_actually]

The half dozen lines of code thing is just insane to me. Can't even comprehend such limits.

[Michael-kmme]

"I can write that code in a tweet, just put it in" - a great quote

[creativecraving]

20:10 Slack has a great shortcut to remove formatting from what you copy. On Windows, type Ctrl+C, Win+R, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Esc, and, finally, paste it wherever you want. 😅

[CottidaeSEA]

Regarding decision fatigue, most AB-tests I've seen in ecommerce indicate that fewer choices is better for shipping alternatives. However, this also depends on what is sold. As such, AB-testing is always necessary to get the best result.

[Wielorybkek]

the problem with being nuanced is that usually you don't have anything to say beyond "it depends" and you cannot make any decision. sometimes you just HAVE TO do something and you cannot go and measure stuff to be "scientific". it's like with playing any complex game like chess - there are some good practices and "rules" of how to play well. very good players will brake those practices when they REALLY know better at the given position but the rest of the time they will stick to the classic rules.

[thethingthatshouldnotbe]

"I can write that code in a tweet. JUST PUT IT IN.", might be the funniest thing I've heard this week. Thank you for that. xD

[nb]

two day old pants? you gotta pump those numbers up. those are rookie numbers.

[Lost_Programmer]

I think that’s why I’m enjoying zero to production so much because it doesn’t target people just learning programming. Also, as a college student with zero industry experience it gives me a perspective of how someone in the industry would go about doing things.

[LiveErrors]

in my unqualified opinion, i believe decision fatigue is something that kicks in when you dont want to make decisions, there are times you want to make decisions it just isnt all the time.