4 ms·

> better best practices Really? No, seriously, where will this end? Now we need better BEST practices? I mean. This "best practices" wagon is just a nonsense.

> better best practices Really? No, seriously, where will this end? Now we need better BEST practices? I mean. This "best practices" wagon is just a nonsense. My impression is some people don't want the burden of thinking, so they want something to memorize. And blame when things go wrong - which they inevitably will, as in any and all "crafts" and "professions". Engineering, medicine, etc, are all full of examples of failures. Is this evidence they should get rid of certifications and all bureaucracy? No. Is software failures an evidence we should have more bureaucracy? No, it's evidence we need to think more and memorize less.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Then perhaps the best practices shouldn't be rules for rote memorization, but better approaches towards thinking and reasoning about code. Maybe this field could use more discipline in how it approaches not just creating code but reading code. What is the use of thinking if it's not guided by methodology? Didn't many of us study computer science?
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  Programming science does not exist.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    And yet, programming claims to be guided by computer science.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Universities claim programming is guided by computer science, because they love sticking the label "science" on non-scientific things. The average working programmer probably doesn't care whether their work is considered a science or not. Certainly I feel like the ROI on reading CS papers in my own career has been quite low. They have a habit of sounding useful and impactful until you finish reading them and realize there's a pretty major catch. I have a degree named "computer science" but it's questionable whether it was really scientific, given that science is usually defined as a study of the natural world. There's nothing natural about computer programming, outside of perhaps complexity theory. You could argue that maybe at the edges deep learning is blurring into a study of naturalistic phenomena, but you have to be careful, otherwise you reclassify pure maths as a science and I think everyone agrees that it's a separate thing.
    - FeepingCreature 5y ago
      Computer science is only vaguely related to programming, in roughly the same way that the travelling salesman problem is related to actually travelling salesmen. (I personally hold that there are only three CS courses relevant to daily programmer life: graph theory, complexity analysis and state machines. Everything else is at best situational.)
- native_samples 5y ago
  But in practice, "best practices" are always set by some sort of stagnant bureaucracy, often some sort of quasi-union organization that demands fees and spends all its time trying to keep newcomers out of the profession in order to protect the salaries of those already inside it. Worse still, it can lead to dysfunctional behavior industry-wide that has no competitive path to fixing it. Look at what's happened to medicine. Huge numbers of people have had their confidence in doctors seriously damaged over the past 2 years because they keep saying things that are patently nonsense, like "oh your period vanished for 5 months immediately after taking a vaccine, it must be a coincidence" (this happened to a friend of ours). Why do they say these things, well, because if they go against the party line on vaccine injuries they can lose their license: https://trialsitenews.com/doctors-sanctioned-for-speaking-out-against-official-covid-policies/ https://trialsitenews.com/doctors-sanctioned-for-speaking-ou... That sort of action has nothing to do with best practices and everything to do with power structures. The software equivalent would be something like, "if you imply Java is not the best language to build enterprise software in, you could lose your license" or "if you write forum software that doesn't run every post through this officially approved AI for misinformation, you can lose your license". It doesn't look like bugs magically disappearing. I'd expect the rate of bugs to go up, actually, as standards ossified and became irrelevant (see: FIPS).
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    What stagnant bureaucracy instituted Agile across the industry, or mandated the widespread adoption of Node, or React, or any hot trending technology of the decade? Ad hoc best practices or chosen tools get picked up all the time without a power structure demanding it. Maybe the compromise isn’t to institute formal licensing, but rather pay more attention to and give more support to industry bodies such as the ACM/IEEE.
llampx 5y ago
Best practices come as an accepted way of doing things. It means not reinventing the wheel for every project. Of course best practices can only work for problems that have already been solved. There are plenty of problems that need innovative thinking and unorthodox practices. The more brain power you can dedicate to solving those problems, the better.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Then perhaps the best practices shouldn't be rules for rote memorization, but better approaches towards thinking and reasoning about code. Maybe this field could use more discipline in how it approaches not just creating code but reading code. What is the use of thinking if it's not guided by methodology? Didn't many of us study computer science?

FeepingCreature 5y ago
Programming science does not exist.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  And yet, programming claims to be guided by computer science.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Universities claim programming is guided by computer science, because they love sticking the label "science" on non-scientific things. The average working programmer probably doesn't care whether their work is considered a science or not. Certainly I feel like the ROI on reading CS papers in my own career has been quite low. They have a habit of sounding useful and impactful until you finish reading them and realize there's a pretty major catch. I have a degree named "computer science" but it's questionable whether it was really scientific, given that science is usually defined as a study of the natural world. There's nothing natural about computer programming, outside of perhaps complexity theory. You could argue that maybe at the edges deep learning is blurring into a study of naturalistic phenomena, but you have to be careful, otherwise you reclassify pure maths as a science and I think everyone agrees that it's a separate thing.
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    Computer science is only vaguely related to programming, in roughly the same way that the travelling salesman problem is related to actually travelling salesmen. (I personally hold that there are only three CS courses relevant to daily programmer life: graph theory, complexity analysis and state machines. Everything else is at best situational.)
native_samples 5y ago
But in practice, "best practices" are always set by some sort of stagnant bureaucracy, often some sort of quasi-union organization that demands fees and spends all its time trying to keep newcomers out of the profession in order to protect the salaries of those already inside it. Worse still, it can lead to dysfunctional behavior industry-wide that has no competitive path to fixing it. Look at what's happened to medicine. Huge numbers of people have had their confidence in doctors seriously damaged over the past 2 years because they keep saying things that are patently nonsense, like "oh your period vanished for 5 months immediately after taking a vaccine, it must be a coincidence" (this happened to a friend of ours). Why do they say these things, well, because if they go against the party line on vaccine injuries they can lose their license: https://trialsitenews.com/doctors-sanctioned-for-speaking-out-against-official-covid-policies/ https://trialsitenews.com/doctors-sanctioned-for-speaking-ou... That sort of action has nothing to do with best practices and everything to do with power structures. The software equivalent would be something like, "if you imply Java is not the best language to build enterprise software in, you could lose your license" or "if you write forum software that doesn't run every post through this officially approved AI for misinformation, you can lose your license". It doesn't look like bugs magically disappearing. I'd expect the rate of bugs to go up, actually, as standards ossified and became irrelevant (see: FIPS).
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  What stagnant bureaucracy instituted Agile across the industry, or mandated the widespread adoption of Node, or React, or any hot trending technology of the decade? Ad hoc best practices or chosen tools get picked up all the time without a power structure demanding it. Maybe the compromise isn’t to institute formal licensing, but rather pay more attention to and give more support to industry bodies such as the ACM/IEEE.

llampx 5y ago

Best practices come as an accepted way of doing things. It means not reinventing the wheel for every project. Of course best practices can only work for problems that have already been solved. There are plenty of problems that need innovative thinking and unorthodox practices. The more brain power you can dedicate to solving those problems, the better.