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Here on HN there are many articles (some even today) ranking where people hammer on about performant code and database queries; never do this, don’t use ORMs et

Here on HN there are many articles (some even today) ranking where people hammer on about performant code and database queries; never do this, don’t use ORMs etc without even knowing any business case they are referring to. People are calling out for people to ‘tweak, optimize and refactor’ without knowing anything about what the reader might be doing. I find that quite a solid case of people doing things they maybe should not be doing while spending a lot of time on these things. If ‘beautiful, highly optimized’ code is not a business goal then I am wondering what money they are burning; if not their own, it could be very worrying for the company.

Chronos309 8y ago
Ok, beautiful and highly optimized code needs to be a standard in my opinion. If it is genuinely well written, it simultaneously teaches new comers good habits (implicit training), and makes future modifications that much easier. These are time savers. Time is money. It is a money saver. Conclusion: Beautiful and optimized code is a money saver. One addendum: Optimized code results in a performant application. This means you are better than a competing product that accomplishes the same thing but at a slower speed. You've maybe heard: 'performance is a feature' for this reason. This, one COULD argue, is a direct money maker. You can then tack on words like 'slick', 'snappy', etc. to your list of descriptors.
- dent9876543 8y ago
  Your response kinda makes the point the article was trying to make.
- slededit 8y ago
  The problem is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've been around long enough to see a few cycles of "best thing ever" -> "never do this". Each time massive disruptive changes were done to the code base, and each time they were simply ripping out last cycle's fad. Certainly there are new things under the sun, but one should try and be respectful of what has come before. It wasn't all crap.

Chronos309 8y ago

Ok, beautiful and highly optimized code needs to be a standard in my opinion. If it is genuinely well written, it simultaneously teaches new comers good habits (implicit training), and makes future modifications that much easier. These are time savers. Time is money. It is a money saver. Conclusion: Beautiful and optimized code is a money saver. One addendum: Optimized code results in a performant application. This means you are better than a competing product that accomplishes the same thing but at a slower speed. You've maybe heard: 'performance is a feature' for this reason. This, one COULD argue, is a direct money maker. You can then tack on words like 'slick', 'snappy', etc. to your list of descriptors.

dent9876543 8y ago
Your response kinda makes the point the article was trying to make.
slededit 8y ago
The problem is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've been around long enough to see a few cycles of "best thing ever" -> "never do this". Each time massive disruptive changes were done to the code base, and each time they were simply ripping out last cycle's fad. Certainly there are new things under the sun, but one should try and be respectful of what has come before. It wasn't all crap.