7 ms·

My favourite is when you're a solopreneur working in your own repos and still asking yourself "who wrote this shit?!"

Bedon292 5y ago
While I am not solo, I have still been around for longer than anyone and the primary maintainer of a few repos. I tend to skip straight to "WTF was I thinking", because if its weird it was definitely me.
mcv 5y ago
I once worked as a freelancer for a tiny company that at some point refused to pay me for one day of work. One of their reasons was that my code wasn't up to their standards. I could see in git that the code they complained about was actually written by their lead (and only) developer. They still didn't pay, though.
- PicassoCTs 5y ago
  I loved those moments, the work was done, you moved on, and they came with all the ammunition they collected to wiggle out of payments. The trick is to give them easily defuseable bad ammunition when they "sneak" around to collect. If you disassemble all their arguments and have emails were they were informed, you can trash them thoroughly. Unpayed though. Cause even good arguments cant help broke little shops.
  - toxik 5y ago
    Small claims court. It’s not acceptable to not pay people accordingly.
    - mcv 5y ago
      I talked to a lawyer, and it just wasn't worth going after them for this amount. I wrote it off as a valuable lesson and went to make more money elsewhere.
      - toxik 5y ago
        You don’t need a lawyer for small claims court as far as I know, just an FYI.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        Unless you are a citizen of the same state the corporation is, you’ll need a lawyer when they file a removal petition to have the case moved to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. And if you don't consult a lawyer to prepare for small claims court, you stand a decent chance to be blindsided by that or something else.
        chris_wot 5y ago
        Do it anyway. For them to hire a lawyer to determine this, then they have to pay quite a bit of money. It is quite possible they might be bluffed and pay up, or decide it is cheaper to pay up, and then actually pay up. If the initial action costs nothing, you have nothing to lose, but they will almost certainly lose something. If you do nothing it will cost you nothing also, but you have no chance of gaining anything at all.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > For them to hire a lawyer to determine this They don't need to hire a lawyer to determine it, the junior paralegal in the in-house counsel’s office with a checklist will do just fine, since all the information needed to make the determination will be on the papers they are served with. > If the initial action costs nothing, you have nothing to lose Not at all true; one of the other standard techniques for getting things out of small claims court is for the defendant to find anything about the interaction in question that they could countersue for that would raise the amount in controversy above the small claims limit (since the requirement for linked counterclaims to be handled in the same case and the small claims limit interact to requiring moving the case when this happens), even if it is something that they wouldn't sue over otherwise.
        5y ago
sbarre 5y ago
I heard a saying once: "all developers should be embarrassed about code they wrote more than a year ago" as a (cheeky) measure of ongoing growth and development. :-)
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  If you think of your own thoughts in the past and cringe, then your brain has grown since then.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Usually I'm cringing about what I said 5 seconds ago.
    - greenonions 5y ago
      Quick delivery cycle
- jnsaff2 5y ago
  Pretty funny, about 15 years ago I started looking back at myself a year ago and decided that until that dude from a year ago looks like an idiot then all is well with my life. Hasn't failed yet.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  I've seriously considered removing some of the older semi-popular projects from my github solely because I would be embarrassed to show them to a prospective employer, or even other developers. In the end I think it's actually kind of fun to look back through the code though, and think "surely I should have known about X back then... Why didn't I just do that instead."
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    Remember that your repos and commits are dated. If someone looks at code that old... what they see is a trend of improvement.
eddieroger 5y ago
I'm not a solopreneur but instead a corporate drone, and every time I git-blame questionable code, it's mine. But like others have said, if you're not embarrassed of something you wrote a year ago, that's not good.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  I am usually embarrassed by my code of five minutes ago, but someone has to write it.
lettergram 5y ago
Yup lol that’s what teaches me that you need to do test driven development.
pbalau 5y ago
After about 20 years of doing this (not particularly as a solopreneur), I understood the following: I sucked really bad yesterday compared to today and today I'm sucking so much more than I will tomorrow. And it makes me really happy that I can still say this. The moment I won't be able to say this anymore, is the moment I'm done and I can finally die.
- chris_wot 5y ago
  Well, the fun thing is that at the moment you expire you can be sure that you sucked the least in your life but some young and inexperienced coder will still look at your code and ask “Who wrote that shit?” :-)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
justinmchase 5y ago
On the other end, it's fun when you encounter a bug and go search for an answer and end up reading an answer on Stack Overflow that _you wrote_ 5 years ago and totally forgot about it.
- someotherperson 5y ago
  Equally fun is using a package or a part of it that you haven't used for a few years and going to read the docs for a certain feature... and realising you're the one that wrote those docs :)
- HalcyonCowboy 5y ago
  Haha, this happened to me for the first time recently. Asked a question, didn’t get any answers, ended up updating my post with the answer I eventually found. Even had a couple of responses thanking me for the follow up. Five years later, ran into the same problem and forgot the answer, my answer was the top result on google.
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    I was once looking to see if there were any projects or discussions regarding <insert niche domain> via the google search "<niche domain> Hacker News". I clicked on the top link because, read the comment, and was annoyed that it didn't actually address the <niche> things I wanted it to. Then I realized I wrote the comment. I didn't address the <niche> things because I was looking for it then and I'm stilling looking for it.
    - naasking 5y ago
      Well now I want to know what <niche domain> is!
      - geoduck14 5y ago
        >Well now I want to know what <niche domain> is! Let's submit ideas! I'll start He wanted to learn about using Machine Learning to predict how often his pet dog would need to go to the bathroom
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I am working on a fairly ambitious project. It is in the stages where we are nearing the end, and the tofu is getting firmer. I had an issue, last week, where a bug was caused by an omission I left from an SDK that I wrote, maybe, eight years ago. It was a simple thing. I didn't add a "RefCon" to a server interaction, so I couldn't attach a reference context to a callback. This is a classic pattern, that I've used for decades, and I have no idea why the hell I didn't add it to this SDK. I suspect that it might be that the SDK was for a fairly wide audience, and I probably thought that they wouldn't understand it. So here I am, paying the price for underestimating my user base (which, so far, is Yours Truly). Anyway, the "fix" was to implement a semaphore, and treat the call as blocking, which is awful. I really need to go back and change the SDK, but that's a fairly fundamental change, that I can't afford, right now (the SDK tofu is rock-hard). Such is the life of a shipping developer...
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Actually, it was about fiver or six years ago. It was an early Swift project. https://github.com/bmlt-enabled/BMLTiOSLib https://github.com/bmlt-enabled/BMLTiOSLib
rob74 5y ago
That's another old saying - you should try to make code readable not only for the sake of other developers who will work on it in the future, but also for your own sake...
klyrs 5y ago
Haha, yeah. My reaction to the title was "my past self, usually." I've seen utterly horrible code written by people who I consider myself leagues beneath. Sometimes git blame is a lesson in humility.

While I am not solo, I have still been around for longer than anyone and the primary maintainer of a few repos. I tend to skip straight to "WTF was I thinking", because if its weird it was definitely me.

mcv 5y ago

I once worked as a freelancer for a tiny company that at some point refused to pay me for one day of work. One of their reasons was that my code wasn't up to their standards. I could see in git that the code they complained about was actually written by their lead (and only) developer. They still didn't pay, though.

PicassoCTs 5y ago
I loved those moments, the work was done, you moved on, and they came with all the ammunition they collected to wiggle out of payments. The trick is to give them easily defuseable bad ammunition when they "sneak" around to collect. If you disassemble all their arguments and have emails were they were informed, you can trash them thoroughly. Unpayed though. Cause even good arguments cant help broke little shops.
- toxik 5y ago
  Small claims court. It’s not acceptable to not pay people accordingly.
  - mcv 5y ago
    I talked to a lawyer, and it just wasn't worth going after them for this amount. I wrote it off as a valuable lesson and went to make more money elsewhere.
    - toxik 5y ago
      You don’t need a lawyer for small claims court as far as I know, just an FYI.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Unless you are a citizen of the same state the corporation is, you’ll need a lawyer when they file a removal petition to have the case moved to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. And if you don't consult a lawyer to prepare for small claims court, you stand a decent chance to be blindsided by that or something else.
        chris_wot 5y ago
        Do it anyway. For them to hire a lawyer to determine this, then they have to pay quite a bit of money. It is quite possible they might be bluffed and pay up, or decide it is cheaper to pay up, and then actually pay up. If the initial action costs nothing, you have nothing to lose, but they will almost certainly lose something. If you do nothing it will cost you nothing also, but you have no chance of gaining anything at all.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > For them to hire a lawyer to determine this They don't need to hire a lawyer to determine it, the junior paralegal in the in-house counsel’s office with a checklist will do just fine, since all the information needed to make the determination will be on the papers they are served with. > If the initial action costs nothing, you have nothing to lose Not at all true; one of the other standard techniques for getting things out of small claims court is for the defendant to find anything about the interaction in question that they could countersue for that would raise the amount in controversy above the small claims limit (since the requirement for linked counterclaims to be handled in the same case and the small claims limit interact to requiring moving the case when this happens), even if it is something that they wouldn't sue over otherwise.
      - 5y ago

sbarre 5y ago

I heard a saying once: "all developers should be embarrassed about code they wrote more than a year ago" as a (cheeky) measure of ongoing growth and development. :-)

Jerrrry 5y ago
If you think of your own thoughts in the past and cringe, then your brain has grown since then.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  Usually I'm cringing about what I said 5 seconds ago.
  - greenonions 5y ago
    Quick delivery cycle
jnsaff2 5y ago
Pretty funny, about 15 years ago I started looking back at myself a year ago and decided that until that dude from a year ago looks like an idiot then all is well with my life. Hasn't failed yet.
CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
I've seriously considered removing some of the older semi-popular projects from my github solely because I would be embarrassed to show them to a prospective employer, or even other developers. In the end I think it's actually kind of fun to look back through the code though, and think "surely I should have known about X back then... Why didn't I just do that instead."
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Remember that your repos and commits are dated. If someone looks at code that old... what they see is a trend of improvement.

eddieroger 5y ago

I'm not a solopreneur but instead a corporate drone, and every time I git-blame questionable code, it's mine. But like others have said, if you're not embarrassed of something you wrote a year ago, that's not good.

bitexploder 5y ago
I am usually embarrassed by my code of five minutes ago, but someone has to write it.

lettergram 5y ago

Yup lol that’s what teaches me that you need to do test driven development.

pbalau 5y ago

After about 20 years of doing this (not particularly as a solopreneur), I understood the following: I sucked really bad yesterday compared to today and today I'm sucking so much more than I will tomorrow. And it makes me really happy that I can still say this. The moment I won't be able to say this anymore, is the moment I'm done and I can finally die.

chris_wot 5y ago
Well, the fun thing is that at the moment you expire you can be sure that you sucked the least in your life but some young and inexperienced coder will still look at your code and ask “Who wrote that shit?” :-)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

justinmchase 5y ago

On the other end, it's fun when you encounter a bug and go search for an answer and end up reading an answer on Stack Overflow that _you wrote_ 5 years ago and totally forgot about it.

someotherperson 5y ago
Equally fun is using a package or a part of it that you haven't used for a few years and going to read the docs for a certain feature... and realising you're the one that wrote those docs :)
HalcyonCowboy 5y ago
Haha, this happened to me for the first time recently. Asked a question, didn’t get any answers, ended up updating my post with the answer I eventually found. Even had a couple of responses thanking me for the follow up. Five years later, ran into the same problem and forgot the answer, my answer was the top result on google.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  I was once looking to see if there were any projects or discussions regarding <insert niche domain> via the google search "<niche domain> Hacker News". I clicked on the top link because, read the comment, and was annoyed that it didn't actually address the <niche> things I wanted it to. Then I realized I wrote the comment. I didn't address the <niche> things because I was looking for it then and I'm stilling looking for it.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Well now I want to know what <niche domain> is!
    - geoduck14 5y ago
      >Well now I want to know what <niche domain> is! Let's submit ideas! I'll start He wanted to learn about using Machine Learning to predict how often his pet dog would need to go to the bathroom

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I am working on a fairly ambitious project. It is in the stages where we are nearing the end, and the tofu is getting firmer. I had an issue, last week, where a bug was caused by an omission I left from an SDK that I wrote, maybe, eight years ago. It was a simple thing. I didn't add a "RefCon" to a server interaction, so I couldn't attach a reference context to a callback. This is a classic pattern, that I've used for decades, and I have no idea why the hell I didn't add it to this SDK. I suspect that it might be that the SDK was for a fairly wide audience, and I probably thought that they wouldn't understand it. So here I am, paying the price for underestimating my user base (which, so far, is Yours Truly). Anyway, the "fix" was to implement a semaphore, and treat the call as blocking, which is awful. I really need to go back and change the SDK, but that's a fairly fundamental change, that I can't afford, right now (the SDK tofu is rock-hard). Such is the life of a shipping developer...

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Actually, it was about fiver or six years ago. It was an early Swift project. https://github.com/bmlt-enabled/BMLTiOSLib https://github.com/bmlt-enabled/BMLTiOSLib

rob74 5y ago

That's another old saying - you should try to make code readable not only for the sake of other developers who will work on it in the future, but also for your own sake...

klyrs 5y ago

Haha, yeah. My reaction to the title was "my past self, usually." I've seen utterly horrible code written by people who I consider myself leagues beneath. Sometimes git blame is a lesson in humility.