4 ms·

> The best programmers I know But are the "best programmers" the best judges of such things. I often find they are not because they often understand their tool

> The best programmers I know But are the "best programmers" the best judges of such things. I often find they are not because they often understand their tools in a way that is incomprehensible to others. I've seen many junion engineers fizzle into disfunction because they are paired with "one of the best programmers". I've seen "the best programmers" adopt tools and patterns that cannot survive their departure because they are too complicated and too specialized for anyone else to own. > rarely see things as 100% good or bad. For me, I held this view most strongly when I was an intermediate programmer. I quickly moved into the "every tool for its job" phase after the "the things I learned with are best" phase. But as I've become an advanced programmer, some of my opinions have become much stronger. For example (and this is just an example I don't want to argue about this) I currently see "the self initializing singleton" as pretty much a 100% bad pattern. This because my experience has taught me that not knowing when something is going to get setup is a weakness, not a virtue. This is an opinion I was actually incapable of developing as an intermediate programmer because I had not yet encountered the myriad of annoying bugs that come from ambiguities of initialization. I just respected the "ease" and "cleverness" of the pattern.

jeppester 3y ago
> I've seen "the best programmers" adopt tools and patterns that cannot survive their departure because they are too complicated and too specialized for anyone else to own. That was not the kind of developer I was thinking about. > But as I've become an advanced programmer, some of my opinions have become much stronger I don't mind strong opinions at all. What I mind is extremism, and how terms like antipattern and code smell contributes to it. You called the singleton pattern you described a "pretty much 100% bad pattern", then went on to explain your experience and opinion in a humble way. I think that's a great example of a strong opinion which was not "extreme".
- wmwragg 3y ago
  I tend to like the phrase "Strong opinions, weakly held" to describe that sort of "best programmers". Through experience they have come to hold certain ideas, and will express them strongly, but are willing to describe why, and also accept that they aren't universal, mostly rules of thumb i.e. they aren't dogmatic.

jeppester 3y ago

> I've seen "the best programmers" adopt tools and patterns that cannot survive their departure because they are too complicated and too specialized for anyone else to own. That was not the kind of developer I was thinking about. > But as I've become an advanced programmer, some of my opinions have become much stronger I don't mind strong opinions at all. What I mind is extremism, and how terms like antipattern and code smell contributes to it. You called the singleton pattern you described a "pretty much 100% bad pattern", then went on to explain your experience and opinion in a humble way. I think that's a great example of a strong opinion which was not "extreme".

wmwragg 3y ago
I tend to like the phrase "Strong opinions, weakly held" to describe that sort of "best programmers". Through experience they have come to hold certain ideas, and will express them strongly, but are willing to describe why, and also accept that they aren't universal, mostly rules of thumb i.e. they aren't dogmatic.