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Why is this person feeding trolls? Don’t we all know people who think they’re infallible are full of shit anyway and just ignore them?

bjackman 2y ago
You can't just divide the world into people who believe fallacies and people who don't. They are rooted in fundamental cognitive biases, everyone falls for the "just try harder"/"just be better"/"just don't put any bugs in the code"/"just have excellent test coverage" thing sometimes. Certainly all the most experienced engineers I work with, who should definitely know better, still haven't fully internalised the fact that all code is broken.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  They really should. I've been programming over 20 years and don't think I've seen a program without at least a few defects. A couple have come close, those are impressive, but bugs always happen.
  - gravescale 2y ago
    Show me a program that has no bugs and I'll show you a program that does nothing at all! Even most Hello Worlds don't check the pipe was written to correctly. And now we get into "well actually that's technically not a bug because it is not in the spec" and if we're finding the need to split that hair, we can hardly be talking about some mythically perfect software.
    - richardw 2y ago
      You’re not wrong but Knuth’s programs have very few bugs and do a shitload. “The reward for coding errors found in Knuth's TeX and Metafont programs (as distinguished from errors in Knuth's books) followed an audacious scheme inspired by the wheat and chessboard problem,[10] starting at $2.56, and doubling every year until it reached $327.68.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check
    - re-thc 2y ago
      > Show me a program that has no bugs They're features!
    - epr 2y ago
      > Even most Hello Worlds don't check the pipe was written to correctly. The word for this is not "perfect", but "overengineered"
    - npsimons 2y ago
      > Show me a program that has no bugs and I'll show you a program that does nothing at all! "Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work."
throwaway4233 2y ago
I do not believe that most of these `perfectionists` are trolls. Some have just very bad experiences either in their career or childhood that make them feel that making mistakes is not normal. I was a `perfectionist` for a while due to certain bad experiences at work, and it was only through the help of really good teammates that I was able to slowly get rid of it. And that required pointing out things like what the author has done in their blog post and once someone sees that mistakes are things that anyone could make, they get more comfortable the concept. The harder part is understanding why a perfectionist is so, and then not getting frustrated while you try to help them improve.
deleted 2y ago
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bjackman 2y ago

You can't just divide the world into people who believe fallacies and people who don't. They are rooted in fundamental cognitive biases, everyone falls for the "just try harder"/"just be better"/"just don't put any bugs in the code"/"just have excellent test coverage" thing sometimes. Certainly all the most experienced engineers I work with, who should definitely know better, still haven't fully internalised the fact that all code is broken.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
They really should. I've been programming over 20 years and don't think I've seen a program without at least a few defects. A couple have come close, those are impressive, but bugs always happen.
- gravescale 2y ago
  Show me a program that has no bugs and I'll show you a program that does nothing at all! Even most Hello Worlds don't check the pipe was written to correctly. And now we get into "well actually that's technically not a bug because it is not in the spec" and if we're finding the need to split that hair, we can hardly be talking about some mythically perfect software.
  - richardw 2y ago
    You’re not wrong but Knuth’s programs have very few bugs and do a shitload. “The reward for coding errors found in Knuth's TeX and Metafont programs (as distinguished from errors in Knuth's books) followed an audacious scheme inspired by the wheat and chessboard problem,[10] starting at $2.56, and doubling every year until it reached $327.68.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check
  - re-thc 2y ago
    > Show me a program that has no bugs They're features!
  - epr 2y ago
    > Even most Hello Worlds don't check the pipe was written to correctly. The word for this is not "perfect", but "overengineered"
  - npsimons 2y ago
    > Show me a program that has no bugs and I'll show you a program that does nothing at all! "Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work."

throwaway4233 2y ago

I do not believe that most of these `perfectionists` are trolls. Some have just very bad experiences either in their career or childhood that make them feel that making mistakes is not normal. I was a `perfectionist` for a while due to certain bad experiences at work, and it was only through the help of really good teammates that I was able to slowly get rid of it. And that required pointing out things like what the author has done in their blog post and once someone sees that mistakes are things that anyone could make, they get more comfortable the concept. The harder part is understanding why a perfectionist is so, and then not getting frustrated while you try to help them improve.

deleted 2y ago

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