4 ms·

> There is a pattern in this list [of green and brown, or most loved and most dreaded, respectively, programming languages]. Can you see what it is? HTML, whic

by msla 3y ago

> There is a pattern in this list [of green and brown, or most loved and most dreaded, respectively, programming languages]. Can you see what it is? HTML, which isn't even a programming language, is in both of them. Just make sure your data is clean. Also: > Old code is the worst. Find me a file in a codebase that has been under active development for more than three years, and it will be hard to follow. Not if the developers have basic good practices and understand how to maintain a codebase, which presupposes that they were ever allowed to do maintenance. This is fundamentally a "manager" article, in that it summarizes a technical concept such that it seems the underlying issue is nontechnical, and it gives managers an excuse to dismiss the technical concerns programmers might have about "technical debt" or "picking the wrong language for the job" with something you can use as a handwave dismissal: "Oh, programmers always grumble about old code. It's harder to read than write, so they dislike our POS system written in pre-RAII C++ with fragile templates."

zikohh 3y ago
> This is fundamentally a "manager" article, in that it summarizes a technical concept such that it seems the underlying issue is nontechnical, and it gives managers an excuse to dismiss the technical concerns programmers might have about "technical debt" or "picking the wrong language for the job" with something you can use as a handwave dismissal After reading the article, I had the same conclusion
tetromino_ 3y ago
> [...] if the developers have basic good practices and understand how to maintain a codebase, which presupposes that they were ever allowed to do maintenance [...] In that parallel universe, they wouldn't need modern programming languages, since that universe's divine developers working unhampered by deadlines and business constraints would surely be able to write bug-free code in Fortran and C :)
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "unhampered by deadlines and business constraints would surely be able to write bug-free code in Fortran and C :) " That would imply that open source (hobby) projects with no deadlines and no buisness constraints are bugfree?
  - tetromino_ 3y ago
    Open source projects with a divine developer, no deadlines, and no business constraints. Example: TeX.
    - xigoi 3y ago
      Clearly having to compile a document three times to get correct output is not a bug, but a feature.
- msla 3y ago
  Part of doing maintenance is being able to migrate to a better language, yes.
- uecker 3y ago
  I think C is a perfectly fine language for modern projects and one can write good software with it. In fact, most software I use on daily basis is written C and extremely reliable: Linux, git, xcfe, terminals, vim, etc. The software I use which is written in C++ or Python have far more issues (e.g. libreoffice or inkscape crash regularily). Python backtraces I see quite often. Or in other words: The notion that all C software is buggy and crashes all the time simply does not match my own experience.
KronisLV 3y ago
> Not if the developers have basic good practices and understand how to maintain a codebase, which presupposes that they were ever allowed to do maintenance. I've definitely seen good intentions and supposedly good practices lead to codebases that are hard to maintain. Heck, I've contributed to the problem myself occasionally - and probably everyone has, as that maintenance experience doesn't come out of thin air. When you look at what the turnover might be at an average org versus how long a system might be used for, it's almost guaranteed that you'll have quite a few cooks in the kitchen, with different opinions in addition to the always changing business requirements and how those might translate to a technical solution. That said, many of the older languages are actually quite valuable for new codebases as well, because most of the problems that you'll run into have already been solved and the frameworks and libraries are both mature and have proven that they'll most likely be around for the foreseeable future.

by msla 3y ago

zikohh 3y ago

> This is fundamentally a "manager" article, in that it summarizes a technical concept such that it seems the underlying issue is nontechnical, and it gives managers an excuse to dismiss the technical concerns programmers might have about "technical debt" or "picking the wrong language for the job" with something you can use as a handwave dismissal After reading the article, I had the same conclusion

tetromino_ 3y ago

> [...] if the developers have basic good practices and understand how to maintain a codebase, which presupposes that they were ever allowed to do maintenance [...] In that parallel universe, they wouldn't need modern programming languages, since that universe's divine developers working unhampered by deadlines and business constraints would surely be able to write bug-free code in Fortran and C :)

hutzlibu 3y ago
"unhampered by deadlines and business constraints would surely be able to write bug-free code in Fortran and C :) " That would imply that open source (hobby) projects with no deadlines and no buisness constraints are bugfree?
- tetromino_ 3y ago
  Open source projects with a divine developer, no deadlines, and no business constraints. Example: TeX.
  - xigoi 3y ago
    Clearly having to compile a document three times to get correct output is not a bug, but a feature.
msla 3y ago
Part of doing maintenance is being able to migrate to a better language, yes.
uecker 3y ago
I think C is a perfectly fine language for modern projects and one can write good software with it. In fact, most software I use on daily basis is written C and extremely reliable: Linux, git, xcfe, terminals, vim, etc. The software I use which is written in C++ or Python have far more issues (e.g. libreoffice or inkscape crash regularily). Python backtraces I see quite often. Or in other words: The notion that all C software is buggy and crashes all the time simply does not match my own experience.

KronisLV 3y ago

> Not if the developers have basic good practices and understand how to maintain a codebase, which presupposes that they were ever allowed to do maintenance. I've definitely seen good intentions and supposedly good practices lead to codebases that are hard to maintain. Heck, I've contributed to the problem myself occasionally - and probably everyone has, as that maintenance experience doesn't come out of thin air. When you look at what the turnover might be at an average org versus how long a system might be used for, it's almost guaranteed that you'll have quite a few cooks in the kitchen, with different opinions in addition to the always changing business requirements and how those might translate to a technical solution. That said, many of the older languages are actually quite valuable for new codebases as well, because most of the problems that you'll run into have already been solved and the frameworks and libraries are both mature and have proven that they'll most likely be around for the foreseeable future.