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I was watching a video the other day where some welder was skimming over settings on the welding machine and assumed I knew or cared what a vague statement "som
by sophacles 3y ago
I was watching a video the other day where some welder was skimming over settings on the welding machine and assumed I knew or cared what a vague statement "some mild grade steel" meant when he could have been marketing his cool looking product called "example welds".
I guess you'd call him a "a welder so huffed up on his own farts that he'd forgotten that the stuff he welds might also do something useful in addition to beind made of the metal and tools du jour".
The rest of us would realize it's not targetted at consumers of welded goods, but as a discussion or example for other welders. It's not something to be mad about, it's perfectly reasonable that welders talk to each other about welding, and sometimes weld things for fun or practice or to show off to each other.
In the world of programmers, we like to do the same thing. Most of us work either on something targetted at people who want marketing and handholding about how to use the product or on something so niche and that it's really only useful to other devs (and mostly the only devs its useful for are a small subset from the first group that work at the same company) - and we often charge for that kind of work. When something's on github, there's a high likelihood it was made by a programmer wanting other programmers to see it for one reason or another.
> I get that this is probably some kind of personal project, but I see so much of this nowadays and it really boils my biscuits.
This has been common since the late 90s when I started paying attention to programming things, and people weren't calling it a new trend then...
- James_K 3y agoI would say the difference here is that no one is going to read it and see the code. As much as people fantasise about reading code, few actually do it and those that do are broadly wasting their time. Your welding example is flawed because because the welder is showing things as examples. He compresses the range of things the tool can do into a useful format and presents that to people, rather than just welding some metal together without commentary. If this project and the techniques used to create it were documented, it might be comparable. A discussion of the solution to a given technical problem can be interesting and would be the equivalent to what the welder when he discusses the capability of his tools.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- babarock 3y ago> I would say the difference here is that no one is going to read it and see the code. As much as people fantasise about reading code, few actually do it and those that do are broadly wasting their time. You'd be surprised how much this statement is wrong. A lot of people enjoy reading the code of the esoteric projects. Case in point, a bunch of HNers are upvoting this and commenting on it. It's not for you, fine. You're not interested. Fine. Shrug and move on, instead of writing half a dozen posts to let the world know you personally don't care much for it. PS: you say it's "wasting their time". I've been in software long enough to know that the people who are good at reading code make some of the best programmers on my teams. Friendly advice: Get good at reading code. Especially when it's clunky, weird and esoteric. It'll go a long way.
- James_K 3y agoThanks for the insult, but I'm very adept at reading code. You know how I got that way? Not by aimlessly trawling through random projects, but by actually interacting with the source code. Picking a random bug on some open source project and solving it will yield ten times the benefit of just reading that project's source, with the added bonus that you achieve something productive at the end. Reading source code is a fantasy. Something that sounds good but falls flat in practice. Hence my almost certain claim that no one actually does it. I don't, do you?
- babarock 3y agoDidn't mean to insult you. It's really meant as a friendly advice. I'm sharing experience. I do read code. A lot. I'm not the only one. I know many people who do. I know people who print source code on paper to read on their bus ride back home. Hell, I know people who read some of the most complicated source code you can imagine, annotate it, criticize it, and then blog about it[1]. It's very weird that you doubt it. Why would we lie? For karma and upvotes? I'm not sure I understand your point. We're literally in the comment thread of a post aimed at reading code and you're here arguing that we're not? [1]: https://kotaku.com/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code-5975610 https://kotaku.com/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-...