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Alternative titles : "How to make your code unreadable in 55 minutes" "How to make your code hard to debug in 55 minutes" "How to introduce bugs by copying a

Alternative titles : "How to make your code unreadable in 55 minutes" "How to make your code hard to debug in 55 minutes" "How to introduce bugs by copying a regex that you don't understand and neither did the author"

SamReidHughes 13y ago
That's a stupid reply. Regular expressions are very useful.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Maybe the next fight on HN about the interview process should be whether we ought to expect the candidate to know about regexps. I know them, so of course every good developer should know them. (My proof: I am a good developer, and I know them, therefore good developers should know them!) (NB: In case it's not obvious this comment is slightly tongue-in-cheek.)
- mattmanser 13y ago
  Regular expressions are useful, but on a much smaller set of problems than people typically use them for. For example Chrome's script skipper in the debug tools completely unnecessarily uses regexes rather than a simple list of 'contains'. It's definitely one of the worst "everything's a nail" hammers a lot of programmers wield. And quite often they've been holding it upside down for years without even realizing it.
  - SamReidHughes 13y ago
    > For example Chrome's script skipper in the debug tools completely unnecessarily uses regexes rather than a simple list of 'contains'. That is your example of overkill? More like, exactly the sort of scenario where you'd want to be able to specify a regexp.
  - psquid 13y ago
    Another situation where regexes are possibly abused - syntax highlighting. Yes, there are a lot of languages where you can sanely highlight /most/ code with regexes, but there's a non-zero number where you need a little more context, such as that provided by an AST (which would also help with autocompletion anyway if the highlighting is being done in the context of an editor).
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    I'm consistently infuriated every time a search box in a GUI lacks regex support (which is very nearly all of the time).

SamReidHughes 13y ago

That's a stupid reply. Regular expressions are very useful.

danielweber 13y ago
Maybe the next fight on HN about the interview process should be whether we ought to expect the candidate to know about regexps. I know them, so of course every good developer should know them. (My proof: I am a good developer, and I know them, therefore good developers should know them!) (NB: In case it's not obvious this comment is slightly tongue-in-cheek.)
mattmanser 13y ago
Regular expressions are useful, but on a much smaller set of problems than people typically use them for. For example Chrome's script skipper in the debug tools completely unnecessarily uses regexes rather than a simple list of 'contains'. It's definitely one of the worst "everything's a nail" hammers a lot of programmers wield. And quite often they've been holding it upside down for years without even realizing it.
- SamReidHughes 13y ago
  > For example Chrome's script skipper in the debug tools completely unnecessarily uses regexes rather than a simple list of 'contains'. That is your example of overkill? More like, exactly the sort of scenario where you'd want to be able to specify a regexp.
- psquid 13y ago
  Another situation where regexes are possibly abused - syntax highlighting. Yes, there are a lot of languages where you can sanely highlight /most/ code with regexes, but there's a non-zero number where you need a little more context, such as that provided by an AST (which would also help with autocompletion anyway if the highlighting is being done in the context of an editor).
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I'm consistently infuriated every time a search box in a GUI lacks regex support (which is very nearly all of the time).