4 ms·

I would enjoy reading more comments from people who have been programming for a very long time about how their coding style has changed.

tgb 12y ago
Seconded! Also I would like to see comments on how programming styles in general have changed over the years - does a 80's era high-quality program still look like a 2010's high-quality program once you factor out the syntactic sugar?
- hisham_hm 12y ago
  For this purpose, it might be worth checking out some classic books such as "Software Tools" and "Project Oberon".
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  I find it fascinating that larger traditional languages have changed little over time, while the languages of front-end development seems to change daily. My coding style seemingly morphs about every few months now. It's sad to think stuff I wrote even three years ago I would never show someone interviewing me or put it in a portfolio nowadays.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    If you don't hate the code you wrote six months ago you're stagnating.
    - acdha 12y ago
      This should only be true during the early days of your career. If you're out of the novice stage, you shouldn't be writing hateful code – maybe there's a new library to use or something you now understand about the problem but that's hardly the level of hatred.
abecedarius 12y ago
I don't have much to say that'd fit in a comment, but for science here are two of my programs in C doing similar tasks, one from the late 1980s, one from 2008: https://github.com/darius/req https://github.com/darius/req https://github.com/darius/vicissicalc https://github.com/darius/vicissicalc
- krylon 12y ago
  Thank you very much!
- EddSeabrook 12y ago
  Line 457-470 of vicissicalc.c: why do you use else if here rather than switch-case?
  - ufo 12y ago
    Might have been because of the `else if (ch == 'q') break;` line. If he used a switch statement he would have needed to use a goto to break out of the loop.
    - abecedarius 12y ago
      That's a reasonable guess, but a return would work there. I think I did it this way because all the breaks you need in a switch are noisy -- too noisy if you'd like to write one action per line. However, you can mute the noise by lining it up: switch (getchar ()) { break; case ' ': enter_text (); break; case 'f': view = formulas; break; case 'h': col = (col == 0 ? 0 : col-1); which also makes oops-I-forgot-the-break hard to miss. I hadn't thought of that pattern yet. (You could define a macro for "break; case" too; my friend Kragen calls that IF.) But I mostly stopped coding in C after around this time.
      - e12e 12y ago
        The first break is ignored?

tgb 12y ago

Seconded! Also I would like to see comments on how programming styles in general have changed over the years - does a 80's era high-quality program still look like a 2010's high-quality program once you factor out the syntactic sugar?

hisham_hm 12y ago
For this purpose, it might be worth checking out some classic books such as "Software Tools" and "Project Oberon".
at-fates-hands 12y ago
I find it fascinating that larger traditional languages have changed little over time, while the languages of front-end development seems to change daily. My coding style seemingly morphs about every few months now. It's sad to think stuff I wrote even three years ago I would never show someone interviewing me or put it in a portfolio nowadays.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  If you don't hate the code you wrote six months ago you're stagnating.
  - acdha 12y ago
    This should only be true during the early days of your career. If you're out of the novice stage, you shouldn't be writing hateful code – maybe there's a new library to use or something you now understand about the problem but that's hardly the level of hatred.

abecedarius 12y ago

I don't have much to say that'd fit in a comment, but for science here are two of my programs in C doing similar tasks, one from the late 1980s, one from 2008: https://github.com/darius/req https://github.com/darius/req https://github.com/darius/vicissicalc https://github.com/darius/vicissicalc

krylon 12y ago
Thank you very much!
EddSeabrook 12y ago
Line 457-470 of vicissicalc.c: why do you use else if here rather than switch-case?
- ufo 12y ago
  Might have been because of the `else if (ch == 'q') break;` line. If he used a switch statement he would have needed to use a goto to break out of the loop.
  - abecedarius 12y ago
    That's a reasonable guess, but a return would work there. I think I did it this way because all the breaks you need in a switch are noisy -- too noisy if you'd like to write one action per line. However, you can mute the noise by lining it up: switch (getchar ()) { break; case ' ': enter_text (); break; case 'f': view = formulas; break; case 'h': col = (col == 0 ? 0 : col-1); which also makes oops-I-forgot-the-break hard to miss. I hadn't thought of that pattern yet. (You could define a macro for "break; case" too; my friend Kragen calls that IF.) But I mostly stopped coding in C after around this time.
    - e12e 12y ago
      The first break is ignored?