4 ms·

The Humble Developer

13 points by terpua 18y ago

swombat 18y ago
But back to laziness. A great programmer is lazy because he or she prefers thinking through a solution to solve a problem rather than hacking through it, which is way too much effort. Dick Vile, a developer I met at FAME Software, a company founded by Larry Rafsky, put it this way: "What do I use to do my programming? A pencil." Thinking things through, coming up with a great design and then doing the coding is the way a real smart, lazy programmer does things. The article is interesting on the whole, but this point falls flat on its face, in my humble opinion. Some up-front thinking is always required, but aiming to have the whole thing thought through before you start coding is terribly wasteful - if only because you will always get (sometimes quite important) parts of it wrong because non-trivial systems are too complicated to hold in your head in their entirety while creating a new design. Also, he's only got one third of the picture with laziness. As Larry Wall said, the *three greatest qualities of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris ( http://cranked.me/2008/07/laziness-impatience-hubris-three-great.html http://cranked.me/2008/07/laziness-impatience-hubris-three-g... ). Humility is in direct contradiction with one of them and in indirect contradiction with another. I personally feel that those are still more important qualities than humility when it comes to being a great programmer - which, I hasten to add, is very different from being a great designer... that requires far more humility.
- Retric 18y ago
  Experts tend to think though problems until they know they can solve them with the given constraints. This does not mean a 100% upfront solution to all problems but rather an understand where the problems are going to be and how to avoid them. I think the idea of a lazy programmer is someone who avoids early optimization and does whatever will make his job faster at each stage of the process.
- krakensden 18y ago
  I think more importantly [with regards to humility] that while it's important to talk with your users, you still need to be hubristic. His reason for being humble is this: There is a huge payoff for being humble about your ability to understand software requirements. In Agile methodologies, the goal is to get users a working program as quickly as possible so they can try it and tell you what they really want But you still need to be a bit of an arrogant dictator and remember that just because users tell you what they really want, doesn't mean they really want that. Which doesn't really map to hubris I guess, but it certainly isn't humility. GNOME 2's `draining the swamp' effort comes to mind.
gruseom 18y ago
I know I should respond to the content of this article, but: Dick Vile, a developer I met at FAME Software Dick Vile? That has to be a punk rock singer. Edit: Ok, a comment on content. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from Forbes - who had any idea they publish columns on software? - but really, an article called "The Humble Developer" that goes on about the 1970s and doesn't mention Dijkstra... just really. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340....
awt 18y ago
I did not know Eric Von Hippel's work was a source of some of the agile methodologies. That is interesting, as the guys in Portland (Dave Thomas et. al) seem to be the biggest influences in design right now. Nice to hear from the originator.
biohacker42 18y ago
That article couldn't make up its mind. First it endorses XP and Agile's frequent user interaction and iterative development over big upfront design. And then it criticizes XP and Agile for not doing enough design. In summary, extremism is bad, so be moderate and smart.
creativeembassy 18y ago
This completely contradicts what I was taught about being a lazy programmer. Laziness, to me, means that you only type the code that you need to (essentially the DRY principal, Don't Repeat Yourself.) Beginner programmers are 'eager', they want to continually pound the keyboard until the program does what they want it to do. Lazy (senior?) programmers carefully decide each line of code that gets included, because they don't want to have to repeat themselves or throw out code that wasted their time. Maybe someone can clarify my thoughts better. But being lazy does not mean waiting to code until you have the entire idea in your head. Programmers who do that typically miss the mark of what their users want.
- maurycy 18y ago
  Mostly yes. The another thing that can be added to your last paragraph is that frequently the code speaks for itself, and suggests you solutions to the problems.
- raju 18y ago
  Again, mostly yes. Another way I look at a "lazy programmer" is in the way of how a developer works. If a "lazy" developer has to do the same thing 3 times, then they will figure out a way to automate it. A "lazy" developer also tries to find the best tools for every job, and figures out how to best leverage those tools for maximum productivity and least effort. Whether it be the right language for a task at hand, to using macros and powerful editors (to perform "surgery" on text [I quote Yegge here]) to learning keyboard shortcuts for their IDE of choice so to minimize hand movements etc. This also applies itself to not violating DRY, to thinking about higher level of abstractions so as to reuse code better, writing modular functions that are easily accessible and do not violate the Principle of Least Surprise. I know I am missing a lot here, but in conclusion, I agree with you about the article.
mironathetin 18y ago
To me this sounds very much like the waterfall model: read requirements, think, write, done. This has a long, long beard.

13 points by terpua 18y ago

But back to laziness. A great programmer is lazy because he or she prefers thinking through a solution to solve a problem rather than hacking through it, which is way too much effort. Dick Vile, a developer I met at FAME Software, a company founded by Larry Rafsky, put it this way: "What do I use to do my programming? A pencil." Thinking things through, coming up with a great design and then doing the coding is the way a real smart, lazy programmer does things. The article is interesting on the whole, but this point falls flat on its face, in my humble opinion. Some up-front thinking is always required, but aiming to have the whole thing thought through before you start coding is terribly wasteful - if only because you will always get (sometimes quite important) parts of it wrong because non-trivial systems are too complicated to hold in your head in their entirety while creating a new design. Also, he's only got one third of the picture with laziness. As Larry Wall said, the *three greatest qualities of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris ( http://cranked.me/2008/07/laziness-impatience-hubris-three-great.html http://cranked.me/2008/07/laziness-impatience-hubris-three-g... ). Humility is in direct contradiction with one of them and in indirect contradiction with another. I personally feel that those are still more important qualities than humility when it comes to being a great programmer - which, I hasten to add, is very different from being a great designer... that requires far more humility.

Retric 18y ago
Experts tend to think though problems until they know they can solve them with the given constraints. This does not mean a 100% upfront solution to all problems but rather an understand where the problems are going to be and how to avoid them. I think the idea of a lazy programmer is someone who avoids early optimization and does whatever will make his job faster at each stage of the process.
krakensden 18y ago
I think more importantly [with regards to humility] that while it's important to talk with your users, you still need to be hubristic. His reason for being humble is this: There is a huge payoff for being humble about your ability to understand software requirements. In Agile methodologies, the goal is to get users a working program as quickly as possible so they can try it and tell you what they really want But you still need to be a bit of an arrogant dictator and remember that just because users tell you what they really want, doesn't mean they really want that. Which doesn't really map to hubris I guess, but it certainly isn't humility. GNOME 2's `draining the swamp' effort comes to mind.

gruseom 18y ago

I know I should respond to the content of this article, but: Dick Vile, a developer I met at FAME Software Dick Vile? That has to be a punk rock singer. Edit: Ok, a comment on content. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from Forbes - who had any idea they publish columns on software? - but really, an article called "The Humble Developer" that goes on about the 1970s and doesn't mention Dijkstra... just really. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340....

awt 18y ago

I did not know Eric Von Hippel's work was a source of some of the agile methodologies. That is interesting, as the guys in Portland (Dave Thomas et. al) seem to be the biggest influences in design right now. Nice to hear from the originator.

biohacker42 18y ago

That article couldn't make up its mind. First it endorses XP and Agile's frequent user interaction and iterative development over big upfront design. And then it criticizes XP and Agile for not doing enough design. In summary, extremism is bad, so be moderate and smart.

creativeembassy 18y ago

This completely contradicts what I was taught about being a lazy programmer. Laziness, to me, means that you only type the code that you need to (essentially the DRY principal, Don't Repeat Yourself.) Beginner programmers are 'eager', they want to continually pound the keyboard until the program does what they want it to do. Lazy (senior?) programmers carefully decide each line of code that gets included, because they don't want to have to repeat themselves or throw out code that wasted their time. Maybe someone can clarify my thoughts better. But being lazy does not mean waiting to code until you have the entire idea in your head. Programmers who do that typically miss the mark of what their users want.

maurycy 18y ago
Mostly yes. The another thing that can be added to your last paragraph is that frequently the code speaks for itself, and suggests you solutions to the problems.
raju 18y ago
Again, mostly yes. Another way I look at a "lazy programmer" is in the way of how a developer works. If a "lazy" developer has to do the same thing 3 times, then they will figure out a way to automate it. A "lazy" developer also tries to find the best tools for every job, and figures out how to best leverage those tools for maximum productivity and least effort. Whether it be the right language for a task at hand, to using macros and powerful editors (to perform "surgery" on text [I quote Yegge here]) to learning keyboard shortcuts for their IDE of choice so to minimize hand movements etc. This also applies itself to not violating DRY, to thinking about higher level of abstractions so as to reuse code better, writing modular functions that are easily accessible and do not violate the Principle of Least Surprise. I know I am missing a lot here, but in conclusion, I agree with you about the article.

mironathetin 18y ago

To me this sounds very much like the waterfall model: read requirements, think, write, done. This has a long, long beard.