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.

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doug_durham 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

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breuleux 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

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sfn42 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

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gmueckl 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I can guarantee you that if you were to write a completely new program and continued to work on it for more than 5 years, you'd feel the same things about your own code eventually. It's just unavoidable at some point. The only thing left then is degrees badness. And nothing is more humbling than realizing that the only person that got you there is yourself.

	▲	jffhn a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I can guarantee you that I have been doing just that for 20 years, creating and working on the same codebase, and that it only got better with time (cleaner code and more robust execution), though more complex because the domain itself did. We would have been stuck in the accidental complexity of messy hacks and their buggy side effects if we had not continuously adapted and improved things.
	▲	sfn42 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, I wouldn't. I have been working for years on the same codebase, it's not that hard to keep it clean and simple. I just refactor/redesign when necessary instead of adding hacky workarounds on top of hacky workarounds for years until the codebase is nothing but a collection of workarounds. And most importantly I just design it well from the start, it's not that hard to do. At least for me. Of course we all make mistake, there's bugs in my code too. I have made choices I regret. But not on the level that I'm talking about.

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pdntspa 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel this too. And it seems like the very worst code always seems to come from the people that seem the smartest, otherwise. I've worked for a couple of people that are either ACM alum and/or have their own wikipedia page, multiple patents to their name and leaders in business, and beyond anyone else that I have ever worked with, their code has been the worst.

Which is part of what I find so motivating with AI. It is much better at making sense of that muck, and with some guidance it can churn out code very quickly with a high degree of readability.

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danielmarkbruce 2 days ago | parent [-]

did you ever consider their code was good and it's you that is the problem?

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pdntspa 21 hours ago | parent [-]

I did, and that is very much not the case here.

I don't know how a "good" programmer opens the same gig+ file for writing in multiple threads (dozens sometimes) without any kind of concurrency management.

A "good" programmer doesn't give you a 2000+-line python script where every variable has no more than two characters in its name, with 0 comments or explanatory info.

A "good" programmer doesn't write a cluster that checks an "OK" REST endpoint on a regular interval, and then have that same cluster freak the fuck out and check 10-100x as often if that "OK" does not arrive exactly as it should.

	▲	danielmarkbruce 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'll take a guess - you've never spent a minute at a company that is considered world class as far a software engineering goes. Am I right?

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93n a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I know this feeling very well.

I usually attribute it to people being lazy, not caring, or not using their brain.

It's quite frustrating when something is *so obviously* wrong, to the point that anyone with a modicum of experience should be able to realize that what was implemented is totally whack. Please, spend at least a few minutes reviewing your work so that I don't have to waste my time on nonsense.

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KronisLV 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ve linked this before, but I feel like this might resonate with you: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

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manmal a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah a bridge has a plan that it’s built and verified against. It’s the picture book waterfall implementation. The software industry has moved away from this approach because software is not like bridges.

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KronisLV a day ago | parent [-]

> It’s the picture book waterfall implementation.

One of my better experiences with software development was actually with something waterfall-adjacent. The people I was developing software for produced a 50 page spec ahead of any code being written.

That let me get a complete picture of the business domain. That let me point out parts of the spec that were just wrong in regards to the domain model and also things that could be simplified. Implementation became way more straightforwards and I still opted for a more iterative approach than just one deliverable at the end. About 75% of the spec got build and 25% was found to be not necessary, it was a massive success - on time and with fewer bugs than your typical 2 week "we don't know the big picture" slop that's easy to get into with indecisive clients.

Obviously it wasn't "proper" waterfall and it also didn't try to do a bunch of "agile" Scrum ceremonies but borrowed whatever I found useful. Getting a complete spec of the business needs and domain and desired functionality (especially one without prescriptive bullshit like pixel perfect wireframes and API docs written by people that won't write the API) was really good.

	▲	skydhash a day ago \| parent [-]
		If you can't get a complete spec, it's better start with something small that you can get detailed info on, and then iterate upon that. It will involve refactoring, but that is better than badly designing the whole thing from the get go.

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sfn42 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		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 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.

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a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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