5 ms·

"Only when you dip down into the mediocre masses do you need this help." And what is wrong with that? Some of us aren't the programming gods you are. If it hel

by chez17 18y ago

"Only when you dip down into the mediocre masses do you need this help." And what is wrong with that? Some of us aren't the programming gods you are. If it helps people why get so high and mighty about it? I know with your superior intellect us philistines might seem dumb to you, but maybe you should stop writing about how smart you are when you can't even spell "programmers" right.

scorxn 18y ago
Amen. If the goal of programming is to liberate humanity from tedium, what's with this kind of elitism? Many of us live happy lives as programmers with zero formal training but relentless curiosity; having never cracked SICP or taken an electronics course but producing solid work -- often with the help of high level languages and frameworks. I mean shit, isn't that the whole point? To let anyone make something effective?
edw519 18y ago
Struck a nerve, huh? This was partially in jest (notice the lol), and I realize this is sometimes hard to convey in writing. Sorry. But there's also a lot of truth in it, too. No one is born a mediocre programmer. It's a choice. Notice I didn't say a "junior" programmer. There's a difference. A junior programmer has less experience, but has a good attitude, is willing to learn, and practice his or her craft to get better. A mediocre programmer is just lazy and thinks he or she knows better. This was directed at the thousands of lazy thoughtless programmers I've had to clean up after over the years. You know the ones. They refuse to follow accepted standards. They name their variables whatever they feel like at the moment. Good luck figuring out what "a" "aa" or "aaa" mean. Or locating them in a text editor. They use single entry, multiple exit. Good luck changing one line of code in the middle of that. They rewrite the same functions over and over, so I have to change all 14 versions. And spend the next 2 weeks regression testing. I only wish these people were required to use a framework that forced them to conform to anything that would have made my life a little easier. If "high and mighty" means "wants to get work done" or "cares about others", then thank you. Some of us choose to write clear, effective, easy to maintain code without a framework. If you ever have to maintain my code, perhaps you'll understand.
- chaostheory 18y ago
  Personally I've found when a decent framework is used, there's a lot less crap; since a lot of choices have already been made ex. for web apps it prevents people from putting everything on one page (DB calls, logic, HTML, ...)
  - mattmcknight 18y ago
    Unfortunately for the original article, the JSR-168 Portal standard is one of the worst things ever created that became horrifically popular for some mysterious reason.
- unalone 18y ago
  I use a framework because I'm aware of the fact that I'm an inexperienced coder. I could work out every little detail by hand, but for me it's much easier to have something basic in place that I can tweak to my heart's content. So I guess I'm just an ambitious junior programmer? Which is to say, I want to get better, but I also want to make my project production-ready as quickly as possible, so I use a frame and fill it out. So I think it's a mistake to say that frameworks are only useful for making bad workers produce work. Better to say that there's a time and place for everything, and that while frameworks are overused, they're useful for certain people doing certain tasks.
- chez17 18y ago
  "Struck a nerve, huh?" Yes. I am not a great programmer. I only started caring about it a couple of years ago and since I don't have a real education in it I am very behind in many areas. I am trying to get better, but it's not easy. "No one is born a mediocre programmer. It's a choice." I don't know if I agree with this. Some people are born with incredible talent in various areas. Some people are just born musicians, others athletes, others programmers. There is no substitute for hard work, but some people will never be able to grasp what others can do. No matter how long you play guitar, you're not going to be Jimi Hendrix. I understand your sentiment, I really do. But I would be careful of calling misinformed people lazy. I would bet good money that there are "standards" I am breaking with my code that I don't even know exist. If the books I read or the sites I visit haven't told me about them, I wouldn't call myself lazy. In the end, HN is a community of amazingly talented people who are, to me, beyond brilliant. I think it's easy to lose sight of the "real world" some times when there are so many smart people in one room. Just have a little bit more slack for people who are trying and not as good as you. I think you will find it explains a lot. "Some of us choose to write clear, effective, easy to maintain code without a framework. If you ever have to maintain my code, perhaps you'll understand." Do you "choose" to do that, or are you benefiting from the years of education and experience you have? It's not like I can wake up tomorrow and choose to be an expert programmer. I can only try to keep learning(which is why I hang around here). I completely understand your frustrations with work, it can be a pain in the ass to deal with people who make your work harder through their incompetence, but I don't think it's as deliberate as you are suggesting it is.
russell 18y ago
Fundamentally, you need to learn your craft. I have just inherited a large project based on Hibernate. I dislike it because there is all this crap between me and the database. I am proficient in SQL as well as Java and I don't like masking a very powerful language with a weaker Java-centric abstraction. If you are going to develop backends you need to understand databases and SQL. If you don't you will end up with an application that doesn't scale and is difficult to maintain.
- megaduck 18y ago
  Sorry to hear that you don't like Hibernate. I'm using it for a project right now, and I greatly prefer it to ActiveRecord. The trick is to use a framework (yes, a framework!) like Grails to autogenerate a lot of the configuration crap for you. I suspect that your large project was built by "Java Engineers" who tried to stuff way too much into the ORM layer. That's an abuse of the tool, not an indictment of the tool itself.
  - russell 18y ago
    It was definitely done by "Java Engineers", but the ORM layer is pretty clean. My problem is that the Java way is very class-centric, not really OO. Why use a class at all, if all you have are getters and setters? It makes sense to me for the ORM layer just to build a list or hash from the result set. A class has no intrinsic benefit, because it's just a struct with extra baggage. One way to get the SQL complexity out of the way is to use a stored procedure, but as far as I can tell Hibernate doesn't support them.

by chez17 18y ago

scorxn 18y ago

Amen. If the goal of programming is to liberate humanity from tedium, what's with this kind of elitism? Many of us live happy lives as programmers with zero formal training but relentless curiosity; having never cracked SICP or taken an electronics course but producing solid work -- often with the help of high level languages and frameworks. I mean shit, isn't that the whole point? To let anyone make something effective?

edw519 18y ago

Struck a nerve, huh? This was partially in jest (notice the lol), and I realize this is sometimes hard to convey in writing. Sorry. But there's also a lot of truth in it, too. No one is born a mediocre programmer. It's a choice. Notice I didn't say a "junior" programmer. There's a difference. A junior programmer has less experience, but has a good attitude, is willing to learn, and practice his or her craft to get better. A mediocre programmer is just lazy and thinks he or she knows better. This was directed at the thousands of lazy thoughtless programmers I've had to clean up after over the years. You know the ones. They refuse to follow accepted standards. They name their variables whatever they feel like at the moment. Good luck figuring out what "a" "aa" or "aaa" mean. Or locating them in a text editor. They use single entry, multiple exit. Good luck changing one line of code in the middle of that. They rewrite the same functions over and over, so I have to change all 14 versions. And spend the next 2 weeks regression testing. I only wish these people were required to use a framework that forced them to conform to anything that would have made my life a little easier. If "high and mighty" means "wants to get work done" or "cares about others", then thank you. Some of us choose to write clear, effective, easy to maintain code without a framework. If you ever have to maintain my code, perhaps you'll understand.

chaostheory 18y ago
Personally I've found when a decent framework is used, there's a lot less crap; since a lot of choices have already been made ex. for web apps it prevents people from putting everything on one page (DB calls, logic, HTML, ...)
- mattmcknight 18y ago
  Unfortunately for the original article, the JSR-168 Portal standard is one of the worst things ever created that became horrifically popular for some mysterious reason.
unalone 18y ago
I use a framework because I'm aware of the fact that I'm an inexperienced coder. I could work out every little detail by hand, but for me it's much easier to have something basic in place that I can tweak to my heart's content. So I guess I'm just an ambitious junior programmer? Which is to say, I want to get better, but I also want to make my project production-ready as quickly as possible, so I use a frame and fill it out. So I think it's a mistake to say that frameworks are only useful for making bad workers produce work. Better to say that there's a time and place for everything, and that while frameworks are overused, they're useful for certain people doing certain tasks.
chez17 18y ago
"Struck a nerve, huh?" Yes. I am not a great programmer. I only started caring about it a couple of years ago and since I don't have a real education in it I am very behind in many areas. I am trying to get better, but it's not easy. "No one is born a mediocre programmer. It's a choice." I don't know if I agree with this. Some people are born with incredible talent in various areas. Some people are just born musicians, others athletes, others programmers. There is no substitute for hard work, but some people will never be able to grasp what others can do. No matter how long you play guitar, you're not going to be Jimi Hendrix. I understand your sentiment, I really do. But I would be careful of calling misinformed people lazy. I would bet good money that there are "standards" I am breaking with my code that I don't even know exist. If the books I read or the sites I visit haven't told me about them, I wouldn't call myself lazy. In the end, HN is a community of amazingly talented people who are, to me, beyond brilliant. I think it's easy to lose sight of the "real world" some times when there are so many smart people in one room. Just have a little bit more slack for people who are trying and not as good as you. I think you will find it explains a lot. "Some of us choose to write clear, effective, easy to maintain code without a framework. If you ever have to maintain my code, perhaps you'll understand." Do you "choose" to do that, or are you benefiting from the years of education and experience you have? It's not like I can wake up tomorrow and choose to be an expert programmer. I can only try to keep learning(which is why I hang around here). I completely understand your frustrations with work, it can be a pain in the ass to deal with people who make your work harder through their incompetence, but I don't think it's as deliberate as you are suggesting it is.

russell 18y ago

Fundamentally, you need to learn your craft. I have just inherited a large project based on Hibernate. I dislike it because there is all this crap between me and the database. I am proficient in SQL as well as Java and I don't like masking a very powerful language with a weaker Java-centric abstraction. If you are going to develop backends you need to understand databases and SQL. If you don't you will end up with an application that doesn't scale and is difficult to maintain.

megaduck 18y ago
Sorry to hear that you don't like Hibernate. I'm using it for a project right now, and I greatly prefer it to ActiveRecord. The trick is to use a framework (yes, a framework!) like Grails to autogenerate a lot of the configuration crap for you. I suspect that your large project was built by "Java Engineers" who tried to stuff way too much into the ORM layer. That's an abuse of the tool, not an indictment of the tool itself.
- russell 18y ago
  It was definitely done by "Java Engineers", but the ORM layer is pretty clean. My problem is that the Java way is very class-centric, not really OO. Why use a class at all, if all you have are getters and setters? It makes sense to me for the ORM layer just to build a list or hash from the result set. A class has no intrinsic benefit, because it's just a struct with extra baggage. One way to get the SQL complexity out of the way is to use a stored procedure, but as far as I can tell Hibernate doesn't support them.