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Other peoples' software will always be "crap" while software you wrote yourself will seem better. Joel Spolsky: "There's a subtle reason that programmers always

Other peoples' software will always be "crap" while software you wrote yourself will seem better. Joel Spolsky: "There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It’s harder to read code than to write it." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html (I do understand, though, that some software may legitimately be crap.)

thyrsusmaximon 16y ago
Bendmorris, Great response. Kudos!!
mmelin 16y ago
That's true, of course, but not really relevant to this discussion. Even if your own code is crap, you're happy to work on it because it is your code. I think a large part of this, for me anyway, is that I have no one but myself to blame for the state of the code and so: 1) I have internalized all the reasons for why it looks the way it does and 2) I can't fall into the trap of blaming everything that's wrong on an external party.
saurabh 16y ago
Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? - George Carlin If you have some free time, do watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
pjscott 16y ago
Really? I see quite a bit of good code from other people. My dissatisfaction with it comes from shear stress when I try to use it from my own software; my expectations of what the code should do are usually subtly different from what the original author intended.
lucisferre 16y ago
I think Joel (as he often does) has oversimplified this massively. If you are a really good developer then the majority of 'other peoples' code will seem to be crap, likely because it is. It is a minority of coders who really and truly care about how they build software and an even smaller group of those who know how. Crap software happens because most people don't care about how to write software. It would be like people publishing novels with only a cursory knowledge of the language (and style) they are writing with (not that this doesn't happen cough twilight cough).

thyrsusmaximon 16y ago

Bendmorris, Great response. Kudos!!

mmelin 16y ago

That's true, of course, but not really relevant to this discussion. Even if your own code is crap, you're happy to work on it because it is your code. I think a large part of this, for me anyway, is that I have no one but myself to blame for the state of the code and so: 1) I have internalized all the reasons for why it looks the way it does and 2) I can't fall into the trap of blaming everything that's wrong on an external party.

saurabh 16y ago

Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? - George Carlin If you have some free time, do watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

pjscott 16y ago

Really? I see quite a bit of good code from other people. My dissatisfaction with it comes from shear stress when I try to use it from my own software; my expectations of what the code should do are usually subtly different from what the original author intended.

lucisferre 16y ago

I think Joel (as he often does) has oversimplified this massively. If you are a really good developer then the majority of 'other peoples' code will seem to be crap, likely because it is. It is a minority of coders who really and truly care about how they build software and an even smaller group of those who know how. Crap software happens because most people don't care about how to write software. It would be like people publishing novels with only a cursory knowledge of the language (and style) they are writing with (not that this doesn't happen cough twilight cough).