3 ms·

Wouldn't you at least agree that the ratio of edits to end text is at least closer to 10:1 than to 1:1 though?

mattmanser 8y ago
I've just finished a site, over the last 3 months. The vast majority of lines are exactly the same as they were when I first wrote them. I cannot comprehend how he wrote 37,000 lines just to get 7,000. Perhaps my problem was easier, but it's a domain I didn't know particularly well though and made a few erroneous assumptions about. Most of the code I got right first time, save a few minor bugs here and there.
- lmilcin 8y ago
  Well, I guess it depends on how you work and the type of work you do. When I worked as a translator (I had an episode translating books from English to Polish) I would more or less write the final version of the text and there would be very few edits. The plan for the text was set by the original so my job was basically to figure out the way to express it in Polish. On the other hand, when I started writing my own texts I would spend much more time editing. I would write passages that I wanted to include, but then I would move them around a lot so that they make more sense for the reader, for example. The same with programming. When I know very well what I am building there would be very few edits. I would start bottom up writing modules and tools and abstractions that I know I will need later and build on it. A website would be a good example. It is not a rocket science. Once you design your UI, processes, it is fairly straightforward to translate it to code. Again, if I work on something very tricky, there is A LOT of edits. My other project is an embedded controller for an espresso machine. I am building this controller from scratch, meaning I design the board, then I receive PCB from manufacturer, then place and solder all components. The code is for ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller which I am getting to know. I would say most of the code was edited many, many times over because of many iterations I need to get stuff working and then to refactor it to integrate with the structure of the application.
eslaught 8y ago
My experience with writing is that edits feel much larger while you're making them. But when you take the final version and actually diff it to the original, and take into account e.g. moving rather than deleting and rewriting text, then the differences are actually quite small. The main exception is when you literally throw everything away and start from scratch. The odds of writing the exact same words twice are basically nil. But I'm not sure this should count as "editing" in the same sense as when I'm doing word-and-line copy editing. I haven't done a rigorous comparison with code, but it would be interesting to take a tool like Moss and see how similar it thinks the code is after <N> revisions of the source.

I've just finished a site, over the last 3 months. The vast majority of lines are exactly the same as they were when I first wrote them. I cannot comprehend how he wrote 37,000 lines just to get 7,000. Perhaps my problem was easier, but it's a domain I didn't know particularly well though and made a few erroneous assumptions about. Most of the code I got right first time, save a few minor bugs here and there.

lmilcin 8y ago
Well, I guess it depends on how you work and the type of work you do. When I worked as a translator (I had an episode translating books from English to Polish) I would more or less write the final version of the text and there would be very few edits. The plan for the text was set by the original so my job was basically to figure out the way to express it in Polish. On the other hand, when I started writing my own texts I would spend much more time editing. I would write passages that I wanted to include, but then I would move them around a lot so that they make more sense for the reader, for example. The same with programming. When I know very well what I am building there would be very few edits. I would start bottom up writing modules and tools and abstractions that I know I will need later and build on it. A website would be a good example. It is not a rocket science. Once you design your UI, processes, it is fairly straightforward to translate it to code. Again, if I work on something very tricky, there is A LOT of edits. My other project is an embedded controller for an espresso machine. I am building this controller from scratch, meaning I design the board, then I receive PCB from manufacturer, then place and solder all components. The code is for ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller which I am getting to know. I would say most of the code was edited many, many times over because of many iterations I need to get stuff working and then to refactor it to integrate with the structure of the application.

eslaught 8y ago

My experience with writing is that edits feel much larger while you're making them. But when you take the final version and actually diff it to the original, and take into account e.g. moving rather than deleting and rewriting text, then the differences are actually quite small. The main exception is when you literally throw everything away and start from scratch. The odds of writing the exact same words twice are basically nil. But I'm not sure this should count as "editing" in the same sense as when I'm doing word-and-line copy editing. I haven't done a rigorous comparison with code, but it would be interesting to take a tool like Moss and see how similar it thinks the code is after <N> revisions of the source.