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I think it ultimately comes down to whether you care more about the what, or more about the how. A lot of coders love the craft: making code that is elegant, te

by breuleux 10mo ago

I think it ultimately comes down to whether you care more about the what, or more about the how. A lot of coders love the craft: making code that is elegant, terse, extensible, maintainable, efficient and/or provably correct, and so on. These are the kind of people who write programming languages, database engines, web frameworks, operating systems, or small but nifty utilities. They don't want to simply solve a problem, they want to solve a problem in the "best" possible way (sometimes at the expense of the problem itself). It's typically been productive to care about the how, because it leads to better maintainability and a better ability to adapt or pivot to new problems. I suppose that's getting less true by the minute, though.

doug_durham 10mo ago
Crafting code can be self-indulgent since most common patterns have been implemented multiple times in multiple languages. A lot of time the craft oriented developer will reject an existing implementation because it doesn't match their sensibilities. There is absolutely a role for craft, however the amount of craft truly needed in modern development is not as large as people would like. There are lots of well crafted libraries and frameworks that can be adopted if you are willing to accommodate their world view.
- breuleux 10mo ago
  As someone who does that a lot... I agree. Self-indulgent is the word. It just feels great when the implementation is a perfect fit for your brain, but sometimes that's just not a good use of your time. Sometimes, you strike gold, so there's that.
  - sfn42 10mo ago
    I kind of struggle with this. I basically hate everyone elses code, and by that I mean I hate most people's code. A lot of people write awesome code but most people write what I'd call trash code. And I do think there's more to it than preference. Like there's actual bugs in the code, it's confusing and because it's confusing there's more bugs. It's solving a simple problem but doing so in an unnecessarily convoluted way. I can solve the same problem in a much simpler way. But because everything is like this I can't just fix it, there's layers and layers of this convolution that can't just be fixed and of course there's no proper decoupling etc so a refactor is kind of all or nothing. If you start it's like pulling on a thread and everything just unravels. This is going to sound pompous and terrible but honestly some times I feel like I'm too much better than other developers. I have a hard time collaborating because the only thing I really want to do with other people's code is delete it and rewrite it. I can't fix it because it isn't fixable, it's just trash. I wish they would have talked to me before writing it, I could have helped then. Obviously in order to function in a professional environment i have to suppress this stuff and just let the code be ass but it really irks me. Especially if I need to build on something someone else made - itsalmost always ass, I don't want to build on a crooked foundation. I want to fix the foundation so the rest of the building can be good too. But there's no time and it's exhausting fixing everyone else's messes all the time.
    - KronisLV 10mo ago
      I’ve linked this before, but I feel like this might resonate with you: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
      - sfn42 10mo ago
        I enjoyed that but honestly it kind of doesn't really resonate. Because it's like "This stuff is really complicated and nobody knows how anything works etc and that's why everything is shit". I'm talking about simple stuff that people just can't do right. Not complex stuff. Like imagine some perfect little example code on the react docs or whatever, good code. Exemplary code. Trivial code that does a simple little thing. Now imagine some idiot wrote code to do exactly the same thing but made it 8 times longer and incredibly convoluted for absolutely no reason and that's basically what most "developers" do. Everyone's a bunch of stupid amateurs who can't do simple stuff right, that's my problem. It's not understandable, it's not justifiable, it's not trading off quality for speed. It's stupidity, ignorance and lazyness. That's why we have coding interviews that are basically "write fizzbuzz while we watch" and when I solve their trivial task easily everyone acts like I'm Jesus because most of my peers can't fucking code. Like literally I have colleagues with years of experience who are barely at a first year CS level. They don't know the basics of the language they've been working with for years. They're amateurs.
        KronisLV 10mo ago
        Then it’s quite possible that you’re working in an environment that naturally leads to people like that getting hired. If that’s something you see repeatedly, then the environment isn’t a good fit for you and you aren’t a good fit for it. So you’d be better served by finding a place where the standards are as high as you want, from the very first moment in the hiring process. For example, Oxide Computers has a really interesting approach https://oxide.computer/careers https://oxide.computer/careers Obviously that’s easier said than done but there are quite a few orgs out there like that. If everyone around you doesn’t care about something or can’t do it, it’s probably a systemic problem with the environment.
      - 10mo ago

doug_durham 10mo ago

Crafting code can be self-indulgent since most common patterns have been implemented multiple times in multiple languages. A lot of time the craft oriented developer will reject an existing implementation because it doesn't match their sensibilities. There is absolutely a role for craft, however the amount of craft truly needed in modern development is not as large as people would like. There are lots of well crafted libraries and frameworks that can be adopted if you are willing to accommodate their world view.

breuleux 10mo ago
As someone who does that a lot... I agree. Self-indulgent is the word. It just feels great when the implementation is a perfect fit for your brain, but sometimes that's just not a good use of your time. Sometimes, you strike gold, so there's that.
- sfn42 10mo ago
  I kind of struggle with this. I basically hate everyone elses code, and by that I mean I hate most people's code. A lot of people write awesome code but most people write what I'd call trash code. And I do think there's more to it than preference. Like there's actual bugs in the code, it's confusing and because it's confusing there's more bugs. It's solving a simple problem but doing so in an unnecessarily convoluted way. I can solve the same problem in a much simpler way. But because everything is like this I can't just fix it, there's layers and layers of this convolution that can't just be fixed and of course there's no proper decoupling etc so a refactor is kind of all or nothing. If you start it's like pulling on a thread and everything just unravels. This is going to sound pompous and terrible but honestly some times I feel like I'm too much better than other developers. I have a hard time collaborating because the only thing I really want to do with other people's code is delete it and rewrite it. I can't fix it because it isn't fixable, it's just trash. I wish they would have talked to me before writing it, I could have helped then. Obviously in order to function in a professional environment i have to suppress this stuff and just let the code be ass but it really irks me. Especially if I need to build on something someone else made - itsalmost always ass, I don't want to build on a crooked foundation. I want to fix the foundation so the rest of the building can be good too. But there's no time and it's exhausting fixing everyone else's messes all the time.
  - KronisLV 10mo ago
    I’ve linked this before, but I feel like this might resonate with you: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
    - sfn42 10mo ago
      I enjoyed that but honestly it kind of doesn't really resonate. Because it's like "This stuff is really complicated and nobody knows how anything works etc and that's why everything is shit". I'm talking about simple stuff that people just can't do right. Not complex stuff. Like imagine some perfect little example code on the react docs or whatever, good code. Exemplary code. Trivial code that does a simple little thing. Now imagine some idiot wrote code to do exactly the same thing but made it 8 times longer and incredibly convoluted for absolutely no reason and that's basically what most "developers" do. Everyone's a bunch of stupid amateurs who can't do simple stuff right, that's my problem. It's not understandable, it's not justifiable, it's not trading off quality for speed. It's stupidity, ignorance and lazyness. That's why we have coding interviews that are basically "write fizzbuzz while we watch" and when I solve their trivial task easily everyone acts like I'm Jesus because most of my peers can't fucking code. Like literally I have colleagues with years of experience who are barely at a first year CS level. They don't know the basics of the language they've been working with for years. They're amateurs.
      - KronisLV 10mo ago
        Then it’s quite possible that you’re working in an environment that naturally leads to people like that getting hired. If that’s something you see repeatedly, then the environment isn’t a good fit for you and you aren’t a good fit for it. So you’d be better served by finding a place where the standards are as high as you want, from the very first moment in the hiring process. For example, Oxide Computers has a really interesting approach https://oxide.computer/careers https://oxide.computer/careers Obviously that’s easier said than done but there are quite a few orgs out there like that. If everyone around you doesn’t care about something or can’t do it, it’s probably a systemic problem with the environment.
    - 10mo ago