3 ms·

Devil's advocate here: isn't a quirky, idiosyncratic coding style with no documentation generally considered a liability just about anywhere else?

steveklabnik 16y ago
Absolutely. Generally, we're talking about building robust, reliable systems, though. _why specifically thought this hampered creativity. I can't find a citation for you right now, though. Part of making his projects my own? Adding this stuff. I can see _why's point, but I don't think it's right for Shoes/Hackety themselves.
- judofyr 16y ago
  You might be thinking about this quote from camping-list? No, let's not have rules. I don't feel comfortable with having coding standards or any protocol on Camping. The point of Camping is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that people make for "beautiful" code these days. To show that ugly code can do beautiful things, maybe. I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the ideas that make Camping different. Camping's personality is 80x50. It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together into a tight little mind-bending machine. The challenge of Camping isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation. The challenge is to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make everyone look twice. Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Not the exact one, but gets the point across nicely. :)
- grammaton 16y ago
  Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it? I respect _why's abilities and contributions - he's done a hell of a lot more for the Ruby community than I have - but I don't take much truck with the "coding as art" mindset. It's a field of engineering with creative overtones. It should be treated as such. Of course, I'm a nobody, so no one cares much what I think :)
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    > Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it? This could also be equally phrased as "Then software engineering kind of misses the point of creativity, doesn't it?" > It should be treated as such. You are certainly entitled to your opinions. I personally fall on the 'craft' side of things: woodworkers can make sculptures or doors. Both are valid applications of their craft. Some people specialize in sculpture, some in doors, and nobody is right or wrong.
    - grammaton 16y ago
      Certainly, it can be viewed as a craft - but isn't 90% of craft learning to do things the 'right way?'
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        Right, but our craft is so new, everyone disagrees about what the 'right way' is, and how to get there.

steveklabnik 16y ago

Absolutely. Generally, we're talking about building robust, reliable systems, though. _why specifically thought this hampered creativity. I can't find a citation for you right now, though. Part of making his projects my own? Adding this stuff. I can see _why's point, but I don't think it's right for Shoes/Hackety themselves.

judofyr 16y ago
You might be thinking about this quote from camping-list? No, let's not have rules. I don't feel comfortable with having coding standards or any protocol on Camping. The point of Camping is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that people make for "beautiful" code these days. To show that ugly code can do beautiful things, maybe. I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the ideas that make Camping different. Camping's personality is 80x50. It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together into a tight little mind-bending machine. The challenge of Camping isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation. The challenge is to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make everyone look twice. Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Not the exact one, but gets the point across nicely. :)
grammaton 16y ago
Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it? I respect _why's abilities and contributions - he's done a hell of a lot more for the Ruby community than I have - but I don't take much truck with the "coding as art" mindset. It's a field of engineering with creative overtones. It should be treated as such. Of course, I'm a nobody, so no one cares much what I think :)
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it? This could also be equally phrased as "Then software engineering kind of misses the point of creativity, doesn't it?" > It should be treated as such. You are certainly entitled to your opinions. I personally fall on the 'craft' side of things: woodworkers can make sculptures or doors. Both are valid applications of their craft. Some people specialize in sculpture, some in doors, and nobody is right or wrong.
  - grammaton 16y ago
    Certainly, it can be viewed as a craft - but isn't 90% of craft learning to do things the 'right way?'
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Right, but our craft is so new, everyone disagrees about what the 'right way' is, and how to get there.