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Regarding your last paragraph, it's a reflection of the state of the industry. The vast majority of "software engineers"/"full stack developers" can't be bother

Regarding your last paragraph, it's a reflection of the state of the industry. The vast majority of "software engineers"/"full stack developers" can't be bothered to learn new skills or improve their existing ones, so any popular programming tool is stuck catering to the least common denominator. Do you carefully review your own code? Do you voluntarily learn any new skill beyond "blog post intro tutorial" level? Do you think about the consequences of a change you make beyond the immediate need it addresses? Congratulations: Regardless of talent, you're already better than ~90% of professional programmers. You're a "10x developer" by virtue of the fact that by a reasonable baseline of quality the remainder are "0.1x developers" or worse. I don't think that Google is wrong to focus on mitigating the damage that the majority of engineers will inflict on a codebase. In fact it's depressing how right they are, and what the realities of software engineering look like at scale. It confuses me though that small teams select tools built to solve those problems.

figgis 9y ago
> Do you carefully review your own code? Do you have any resources for getting better at this? I don't get a lot of chances for other people to review what I write (yeah believe me I know..) and am looking into better ways to make sure I don't release shit. I have a decent amount of testing automated for a majority of my projects but that's turning into an extra job on-top of my already demanding job.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  It sounds like you're already doing a good job of trying to not ship garbage.
- tjalfi 9y ago
  Here are some of the techniques that I use for C, C++, and C#. Read every checkin twice before committing it. I find and fix many bugs by doing this. Keep a log of errors and problematic APIs. Periodically review your code for methods and idioms that you tend to misuse. I find it easier to spot one incorrect call to an API when looking at all uses of it. Enable all compiler warnings and use warnings as errors. It is easier to spot regressions when the build is normally silent. If a project has a noisy build then use the normal warning level and enable additional warnings over time.
KirinDave 9y ago
I talk to a lot of people new to the industry, both by way of my employer and my via University. I have a hard time being this cynical. I think post-educational market forces drive this trend, not the personal inattentiveness that I sense (perhaps unfairly, please correct me) that you blame.

figgis 9y ago

> Do you carefully review your own code? Do you have any resources for getting better at this? I don't get a lot of chances for other people to review what I write (yeah believe me I know..) and am looking into better ways to make sure I don't release shit. I have a decent amount of testing automated for a majority of my projects but that's turning into an extra job on-top of my already demanding job.

thesmallestcat 9y ago
It sounds like you're already doing a good job of trying to not ship garbage.
tjalfi 9y ago
Here are some of the techniques that I use for C, C++, and C#. Read every checkin twice before committing it. I find and fix many bugs by doing this. Keep a log of errors and problematic APIs. Periodically review your code for methods and idioms that you tend to misuse. I find it easier to spot one incorrect call to an API when looking at all uses of it. Enable all compiler warnings and use warnings as errors. It is easier to spot regressions when the build is normally silent. If a project has a noisy build then use the normal warning level and enable additional warnings over time.

KirinDave 9y ago

I talk to a lot of people new to the industry, both by way of my employer and my via University. I have a hard time being this cynical. I think post-educational market forces drive this trend, not the personal inattentiveness that I sense (perhaps unfairly, please correct me) that you blame.