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I've been such a 'toxic' person on some startup for couple of years. Impotent management was unable to setup code style conventions and outsourced all decisions

I've been such a 'toxic' person on some startup for couple of years. Impotent management was unable to setup code style conventions and outsourced all decisions to the team in 'democratic' way. Weak inexperienced developers always voted against well known practices and started to invent something ridiculous all the time :D

avidiax 3y ago
Does it matter whether you are right? If people do something in a way you didn't prefer, and it goes well, can you admit that your preference didn't matter? If it goes poorly, can you admit that you may not know that it would have been better if your preference was honored? Developers and management both need the opportunity to try new things and make mistakes. Being the voice of wisdom doesn't necessarily mean being the force of wisdom.
taylodl 3y ago
As I said, I've been developing software for the past 40 years. In that time one thing I have discovered is code style conventions is 100% a waste of time. Actually, I take that back - they're a 110% waste of time. Why? Because code style conventions have nothing to do with the performance or maintainability of the code and wasting time on such trivialities is destroying team morale which is destructive to productivity. I haven't done any code reviews for the past 15 years. Why? They're a complete waste of time. I follow the "show me, don't tell me" mantra. Show me evidence your code works. That evidence is in the form of repeatable tests. I'm going to review the quality of your tests - did you test the so-called "blue sky" case and a few of the most obvious error cases? Cool. People are stunned when I don't even look at their code. I don't need to. Does this bite the team in the ass every now and then? Sure, but not as often as you think. When it does it's a teachable moment. I now have a younger engineer wanting to be mentored by the old gray-haired guy how they can improve. I always tell them there's no single best or right answer - engineering is all about trade-offs. I teach them how to recognize those trade-offs and how to evaluate them. As time goes on they come to me while they've evaluating the trade-offs and I can help them work through it. This is far better than any code review checking for style conventions. Besides which, architecture and design matter far more than any silly code style conventions.

avidiax 3y ago

Does it matter whether you are right? If people do something in a way you didn't prefer, and it goes well, can you admit that your preference didn't matter? If it goes poorly, can you admit that you may not know that it would have been better if your preference was honored? Developers and management both need the opportunity to try new things and make mistakes. Being the voice of wisdom doesn't necessarily mean being the force of wisdom.

taylodl 3y ago

As I said, I've been developing software for the past 40 years. In that time one thing I have discovered is code style conventions is 100% a waste of time. Actually, I take that back - they're a 110% waste of time. Why? Because code style conventions have nothing to do with the performance or maintainability of the code and wasting time on such trivialities is destroying team morale which is destructive to productivity. I haven't done any code reviews for the past 15 years. Why? They're a complete waste of time. I follow the "show me, don't tell me" mantra. Show me evidence your code works. That evidence is in the form of repeatable tests. I'm going to review the quality of your tests - did you test the so-called "blue sky" case and a few of the most obvious error cases? Cool. People are stunned when I don't even look at their code. I don't need to. Does this bite the team in the ass every now and then? Sure, but not as often as you think. When it does it's a teachable moment. I now have a younger engineer wanting to be mentored by the old gray-haired guy how they can improve. I always tell them there's no single best or right answer - engineering is all about trade-offs. I teach them how to recognize those trade-offs and how to evaluate them. As time goes on they come to me while they've evaluating the trade-offs and I can help them work through it. This is far better than any code review checking for style conventions. Besides which, architecture and design matter far more than any silly code style conventions.