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> because most of the time you read your own code This is just not the case in most software engineering jobs outside things like startups where you're on the
by barrkel 5y ago
> because most of the time you read your own code
This is just not the case in most software engineering jobs outside things like startups where you're on the original team, or your pet project.
In a team amongst other teams, you'll be reading code that you need to integrate with, reading colleagues' code when reviewing, and generally be producing much less than the sum of the code produced by everyone else on your team and your dependencies.
If you're the single owner of a component or subsystem, then it can be true, but that's not normally healthy for a software company - it implies a low bus factor.
- antirez 5y agoYou can read "your own" also as "you own team/group/...", and you as a group can have standards and quality checks on how to write good code. Especially the initial architecture of every new big system should be scrutinized with care to avoid starting with a spaghetti-system from the scratch that will hardly get better. And of course: coding standards for all.
- xmprt 5y agoBus factor meaning the number of engineers who would have to die in a bus crash for the company to stop working?
- frosted-flakes 5y agoThat works too, but the saying is "hit by a bus".
- Jensson 5y agoCompanies never stop working like that, they just stop being able to make changes. So many companies has huge amounts of legacy code nobody understands and they still work, that is what bus factor 0 looks like. It isn't the end of the company but it is the end of any significant innovations the company can do with that product.
- Jensson 5y ago> If you're the single owner of a component or subsystem, then it can be true, but that's not normally healthy for a software company - it implies a low bus factor. Your typical company has a bus factor of 0, having one programmer who knows the code seems like a huge improvement over that.