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Early in my career, a project manager said to me, "I've never heard one programmer praise another programmer's code. They always criticize!" I think that reinfo

Early in my career, a project manager said to me, "I've never heard one programmer praise another programmer's code. They always criticize!" I think that reinforced for me both that someone's approach might be good even if it isn't my own, and also that it's important to say when something is done well. Of course, there's also just a lot of bad code out there.... :-)

ams6110 14y ago
A lot of programmers are insecure. They were the nerds in school, not popular, not good at sports, etc. Programming is the one thing they can do where they feel in control, and confident. So they naturally tend to be defensive about it.
- mylittlepony 14y ago
  > A lot of programmers are insecure. You mean a lot of persons? If you don't, I wonder where you got this from. Personal experience maybe? Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident, and I criticized this article because he used a kind of link-bait title (should have been "Today I learned about inheritance and it's awesome", something like that), and he also turned out to be selling programming books like he was an expert, which is scammy, and reinforces the fact that you can only find good books through recommendations from your peers.
  - tjr 14y ago
    So he didn't know some aspect of polymorphism. Is that pertinent to his book? It's not as if using if/else constructs is bad or wrong. In some fields of development it would be preferred, for blatant clarity. Does it follow that his book is bad or wrong because it was not written with understanding of this aspect of polymorphism?
    - mylittlepony 14y ago
      "You can reuse code with inheritance. Absolutely crazy. Brilliant. All of this blew me away."
      - EvilTerran 14y ago
        I don't rightly understand why you would choose to assume the worst possible interpretation of that line and take it as grounds to heap scorn upon the writer (it strikes me as a tad uncharitable, and needlessly hostile), but http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5160287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5160287
  - anu_gupta 14y ago
    > Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident, I'm fairly certain this is a lie, given the way you've presented yourself in this thread.
    - mylittlepony 14y ago
      I'm fairly certain you don't think it's a lie, and you are just envious. Either way, I don't see how any of this matters. I explained why I criticized the guy, and instead of working on that, you tried to undermine the anecdotal part.
      - SanderMak 14y ago
        anecdotal
      - vog 14y ago
        -1 for the ad hominem: "... and you are just envious"
        mylittlepony 14y ago
        Are you kidding me? I was copying his style, to show him how irrelevant and childish the statement was. Also, it wasn't an ad hominem, since there wasn't any argument being debated. Get your fallacies straight. I guess this is why you have 9999 submissions with 1 point. To be able to go around downvoting and incorrectly calling people out on a fallacy (the new trick you have learned).
        vog 14y ago
        > Also, it wasn't an ad hominem ... I don't get it. What's the point of replying to a perceived false accusation of ad hominem with three more ad hominems? "Get your fallacies straight", "I guess this is why you have ...", "(the new trick you have learned)"
        14y ago
cubicle67 14y ago
I spent a few years as the sole maintainer of a moderately complex enterprise app written prettly much entirely in PLSQL. Hundreds of thousands of lines of it. By the time I left a reasonable proportion of that was code I'd added. A few months after I'd left I got a phone call from the guy who'd taken over the project - he rang specifically to compliment me on the code and how easy it was for him to understand what was going on and how much better that had made his work. Didn't really know how to respond as I've never had that before, but it was nice. Not blowing my own trumpet, so to speak (although it is something I'm kinda proud of) but to provide a counter data point to your PM's
- enjoy-your-stay 14y ago
  Although I've never gone to the effort of actually calling somebody up to thank them, I have gone out of my way to thank colleagues whose code I've been maintaining if I have found it easy to work with. Code that is: consistent in style and approach (even if it's different to mine) easy to to reason about has clear comments detailing why something was done the way it was is hard to do consistently, and very often stands out from the spaghetti code that's present in other parts of the system. The reason I do this is firstly to let the person know I appreciate the effort they have gone to, and secondly to signal to the other developers on the project that this is something worth trying to attain, and at least one person values these things.
- pjungwir 14y ago
  Thanks for sharing your story! Now that I'm a freelancer, I see lots of different code bases, and I've seen a few that are really nice. It feels great to see and appreciate someone's else good work. I make a point of letting the people in charge know that the previous/other contributors have done a great job. One of the great things about joining a well-written project is that usually I learn something new. If that guy was so struck by your code that he called you up, I bet he learned a few things, too. As in the OP's story, sometimes the code I learn most from isn't immediately obvious, and I have to "go with it" for a bit before I see what's happening. But that takes some openness, perhaps something like what Zen folks call "beginner's mind." There are times when, like you, I have to start tearing things out and rewriting chunks of functionality, but in general I think programmers are too quick to take that step. My PM anecdote taught me the importance of reading other folks' code charitably, really trying to understand why they made the choices they did, and doing my best to respect and follow their approach. Textual interpretation has the "principle of charity," and reading code probably should too.
muppetman 14y ago
I maintain an old ircII script. The guy that originally wrote it (srfrog - the LiCe script) is just an amazing programmer. The whole thing is clean and beautiful. I feel ashamed when I touch it I dirty it up.

ams6110 14y ago

A lot of programmers are insecure. They were the nerds in school, not popular, not good at sports, etc. Programming is the one thing they can do where they feel in control, and confident. So they naturally tend to be defensive about it.

mylittlepony 14y ago
> A lot of programmers are insecure. You mean a lot of persons? If you don't, I wonder where you got this from. Personal experience maybe? Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident, and I criticized this article because he used a kind of link-bait title (should have been "Today I learned about inheritance and it's awesome", something like that), and he also turned out to be selling programming books like he was an expert, which is scammy, and reinforces the fact that you can only find good books through recommendations from your peers.
- tjr 14y ago
  So he didn't know some aspect of polymorphism. Is that pertinent to his book? It's not as if using if/else constructs is bad or wrong. In some fields of development it would be preferred, for blatant clarity. Does it follow that his book is bad or wrong because it was not written with understanding of this aspect of polymorphism?
  - mylittlepony 14y ago
    "You can reuse code with inheritance. Absolutely crazy. Brilliant. All of this blew me away."
    - EvilTerran 14y ago
      I don't rightly understand why you would choose to assume the worst possible interpretation of that line and take it as grounds to heap scorn upon the writer (it strikes me as a tad uncharitable, and needlessly hostile), but http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5160287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5160287
- anu_gupta 14y ago
  > Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident, I'm fairly certain this is a lie, given the way you've presented yourself in this thread.
  - mylittlepony 14y ago
    I'm fairly certain you don't think it's a lie, and you are just envious. Either way, I don't see how any of this matters. I explained why I criticized the guy, and instead of working on that, you tried to undermine the anecdotal part.
    - SanderMak 14y ago
      anecdotal
    - vog 14y ago
      -1 for the ad hominem: "... and you are just envious"
      - mylittlepony 14y ago
        Are you kidding me? I was copying his style, to show him how irrelevant and childish the statement was. Also, it wasn't an ad hominem, since there wasn't any argument being debated. Get your fallacies straight. I guess this is why you have 9999 submissions with 1 point. To be able to go around downvoting and incorrectly calling people out on a fallacy (the new trick you have learned).
        vog 14y ago
        > Also, it wasn't an ad hominem ... I don't get it. What's the point of replying to a perceived false accusation of ad hominem with three more ad hominems? "Get your fallacies straight", "I guess this is why you have ...", "(the new trick you have learned)"
        14y ago

cubicle67 14y ago

I spent a few years as the sole maintainer of a moderately complex enterprise app written prettly much entirely in PLSQL. Hundreds of thousands of lines of it. By the time I left a reasonable proportion of that was code I'd added. A few months after I'd left I got a phone call from the guy who'd taken over the project - he rang specifically to compliment me on the code and how easy it was for him to understand what was going on and how much better that had made his work. Didn't really know how to respond as I've never had that before, but it was nice. Not blowing my own trumpet, so to speak (although it is something I'm kinda proud of) but to provide a counter data point to your PM's

enjoy-your-stay 14y ago
Although I've never gone to the effort of actually calling somebody up to thank them, I have gone out of my way to thank colleagues whose code I've been maintaining if I have found it easy to work with. Code that is: consistent in style and approach (even if it's different to mine) easy to to reason about has clear comments detailing why something was done the way it was is hard to do consistently, and very often stands out from the spaghetti code that's present in other parts of the system. The reason I do this is firstly to let the person know I appreciate the effort they have gone to, and secondly to signal to the other developers on the project that this is something worth trying to attain, and at least one person values these things.
pjungwir 14y ago
Thanks for sharing your story! Now that I'm a freelancer, I see lots of different code bases, and I've seen a few that are really nice. It feels great to see and appreciate someone's else good work. I make a point of letting the people in charge know that the previous/other contributors have done a great job. One of the great things about joining a well-written project is that usually I learn something new. If that guy was so struck by your code that he called you up, I bet he learned a few things, too. As in the OP's story, sometimes the code I learn most from isn't immediately obvious, and I have to "go with it" for a bit before I see what's happening. But that takes some openness, perhaps something like what Zen folks call "beginner's mind." There are times when, like you, I have to start tearing things out and rewriting chunks of functionality, but in general I think programmers are too quick to take that step. My PM anecdote taught me the importance of reading other folks' code charitably, really trying to understand why they made the choices they did, and doing my best to respect and follow their approach. Textual interpretation has the "principle of charity," and reading code probably should too.

muppetman 14y ago

I maintain an old ircII script. The guy that originally wrote it (srfrog - the LiCe script) is just an amazing programmer. The whole thing is clean and beautiful. I feel ashamed when I touch it I dirty it up.