3 ms·

The issue is not that nobody can hold these systems in their head, they can - they're just not paid to. Your average developer will be working in a new job, on

The issue is not that nobody can hold these systems in their head, they can - they're just not paid to. Your average developer will be working in a new job, on a brand new tech stack, in 2 years. Is two years enough time to understand the intricacies of doing serious work with that set of tools? The additional bit is that operating system kernels and hardware have gotten really, really, really good - so very much of the programming paradigm is to spend as little effort as possible to write the stupid thing, because most work is boring and stupid and doesn't get you a competitive edge, eventually the compiler, the operating system, or better hardware will fix it for you. However, if you spend a lot of time working through something and doing it right, the timeliness gets you put on performance review.

_gabe_ 4y ago
> The issue is not that nobody can hold these systems in their head, they can - they're just not paid to. As of 2022, the largest transistor count in a commercially available microprocessor is 114 billion transistors[0] According to cloc run against 3.13, Linux is about 12 million lines of code.[1] Anyone that tells you they can keep this much information in their head is lying to you. And this doesn't even include how many lines of code are in a modern browser, which is still before we even get to a modern web dev stack. The total culmination of layers of code is impossible for any one person to hold in their head. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count [1]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223746/why-is-the-linux-kernel-15-million-lines-of-code https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223746/why-is-the-l...
- hazelnut-tree 4y ago
  I agree. In fact, many open source (and closed source) codebases are understood by only a handful of developers with deep understanding of the design and code (e.g. the original developer or a developer with many contributions). The rest of us (including me) have a superficial understanding of the code at best. There's even a word that developers use to describe popular open source frameworks: 'magic'. A euphemistic way to say: 'I have no-idea how the code fit together, but this code library or framework is popular and it all works'.

_gabe_ 4y ago

> The issue is not that nobody can hold these systems in their head, they can - they're just not paid to. As of 2022, the largest transistor count in a commercially available microprocessor is 114 billion transistors[0] According to cloc run against 3.13, Linux is about 12 million lines of code.[1] Anyone that tells you they can keep this much information in their head is lying to you. And this doesn't even include how many lines of code are in a modern browser, which is still before we even get to a modern web dev stack. The total culmination of layers of code is impossible for any one person to hold in their head. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count [1]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223746/why-is-the-linux-kernel-15-million-lines-of-code https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223746/why-is-the-l...

hazelnut-tree 4y ago
I agree. In fact, many open source (and closed source) codebases are understood by only a handful of developers with deep understanding of the design and code (e.g. the original developer or a developer with many contributions). The rest of us (including me) have a superficial understanding of the code at best. There's even a word that developers use to describe popular open source frameworks: 'magic'. A euphemistic way to say: 'I have no-idea how the code fit together, but this code library or framework is popular and it all works'.