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I think you're wrong on this. How often does software get created without the creator having a primary goal in mind? How often is the main goal handling things

I think you're wrong on this. How often does software get created without the creator having a primary goal in mind? How often is the main goal handling things going wrong? If I write something to build a chart out of some logs, the first, most basic thing I'm going to evaluate it on is "can it make the chart?", not "how does it handle a malformed log entry?". I will think about these things, but they're inarguably not the first thing (the happy path) I think about when I think about the purpose of the code as a whole.

JeffSnazz 3y ago
I mean, how often is quality software made? I agree with you, but I'd argue most software is compromised by shitty incentives. Humans mostly write buggy and incoherent software—this is solved by consensus across disparate incentives. The "primary goal" as you state is often characterized by others as "bias"
- rimunroe 3y ago
  > I mean, how often is quality software made? I have no idea what you mean by quality software, so I can't answer that. Can you give an example? I also have no idea what your alternative framing is. It seems like fundamentally not how people think of software. > The "primary goal" as you state is often characterized by others as "bias" ...yes, that's the point of I (and I believe the others) have been making. People are generally biased to focus on the happy path. I'm honestly having trouble figuring out your line of argument from your various comments. Maybe I misunderstood what you said earlier about your experience contradicting mine. Were you actually saying that you really did believe everyone else was worse at programming?
  - JeffSnazz 3y ago
    > Were you actually saying that you really did believe everyone else was worse at programming? What? I'm surely just as vulnerable to giving a shit about the happy path as everyone else. I'm just saying this leads to bad software, and anywhere you see good software produced you see people giving inspection to the code paths they suspected were error-free. The conception that giving extra attention to the error path leads to better software seems to entirely confuse the concept of a flawed program with some kind of finite bulk work that needs to be done.

JeffSnazz 3y ago

I mean, how often is quality software made? I agree with you, but I'd argue most software is compromised by shitty incentives. Humans mostly write buggy and incoherent software—this is solved by consensus across disparate incentives. The "primary goal" as you state is often characterized by others as "bias"

rimunroe 3y ago
> I mean, how often is quality software made? I have no idea what you mean by quality software, so I can't answer that. Can you give an example? I also have no idea what your alternative framing is. It seems like fundamentally not how people think of software. > The "primary goal" as you state is often characterized by others as "bias" ...yes, that's the point of I (and I believe the others) have been making. People are generally biased to focus on the happy path. I'm honestly having trouble figuring out your line of argument from your various comments. Maybe I misunderstood what you said earlier about your experience contradicting mine. Were you actually saying that you really did believe everyone else was worse at programming?
- JeffSnazz 3y ago
  > Were you actually saying that you really did believe everyone else was worse at programming? What? I'm surely just as vulnerable to giving a shit about the happy path as everyone else. I'm just saying this leads to bad software, and anywhere you see good software produced you see people giving inspection to the code paths they suspected were error-free. The conception that giving extra attention to the error path leads to better software seems to entirely confuse the concept of a flawed program with some kind of finite bulk work that needs to be done.