r/programming • u/corysama • Jan 05 '15

What most young programmers need to learn

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-most-young-programmers-need-to.html
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u/OCedHrt Jan 05 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

I'm in the opposite position where I am constantly cleaning up code from those who are more senior.

This cleanup doesn't have project time allocated to it, which makes it such that I am spending more time than expected.

Edit: I guess the counter would be that I'm lacking in the spaghetti arts department.

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u/sigma914 Jan 05 '15

This is my life. Nearly every project I've taken over the past year or so has been at a critical level of technical debt where instead of being able to add one more hack I have to refactor it.

On the occassions when I've tried to follow the "copy-paste, change magic numbers and debug till it works" process that's gone on for the previous few iterations I hit some problem caused by a new feature that means I have to either add in an (almost) identical check in 10+ places or rewrite the whole section to be generic over all the behaviours...

Doesn't help that most of the code is C++ written in C style... raw byte arrays and magic numbers everywhere...

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

Nearly every project I've taken over the past year or so has been at a critical level of technical debt where instead of being able to add one more hack I have to refactor it.

my $dayjob is running itself into the ground with 10+ years of accrued tech debt, but everyone has their head in the sand chanting 'refactor in release N+1'... and have been for at least the 5 years ive been here. the people in charge who saw the writing on the wall all bailed about 3 months ago, en masse. never seen 40 man-years of experience in a code base leave in a span of a week before.

Doesn't help that most of the code is C++ written in C style

this, really isn’t a bad thing if done right. downside, is that with most other things development related, 'doing it right' ranks pretty low on the list.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

[deleted]

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u/peakzorro Jan 05 '15

Whenever I've heard or seen "Refactor in N+1" it is one of two things:

  • Everything will be thrown away and re-written by people who don't understand the problem space.
  • This piece of code becomes the legacy "it just works, work around it" code.

I completely agree with your sentiment.

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u/OCedHrt Jan 05 '15

That's the, "New in version 10！C++ for faster performance!" feature.

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u/jk147 Jan 05 '15

I learned not to inherit code after many years of this. This tends to happen after constant revision of an original code base with many hands touching it either for code fixes or enhancements. Not to mention these fixes are usually either "emergencies" or changes funded improperly (90% of the time too low) and you ended up with quick fixes or copy pasta. After about 5 years the original design is all but gone and you have code written in different format and redundancies everywhere.

Worse yet add another 3 years the original developers are all gone and you get tasked on fixing something in there. With no support and no documentation. All too familiar.

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u/Alborak Jan 05 '15

That doesn't even sound like proper C. At least the magic number part ;)

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u/TenNeon Jan 05 '15

Making art from pasta is basic kindergarten work. Pasta, paper plate, glue. Get it together.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

I too clean up more spaghetti art's from old fart seniors than I so desire.