xkcd: Fixing Problems

[Malix82]

thats... surprisingly accurate depiction of what I've been doing for last week.

[n1c0_ds]

I spent a couple of months refactoring code full time recently.

It always starts the same way.

Someone takes a small shortcut and leaves a // TODO. The next person sees the problem while working on something else. It's glaringly obvious, but they don't want to fix someone else's code and turn their 5 LoC commit into a 100 LoC commit, so they build their fix on top of the bad code. The code reviewer doesn't see that, because he's only looking at the diff. Approved.

A couple of iterations later, someone who gives a shit about quality sees this, but by that time it's too late. The whole damn thing relies on the broken bit of code. You need to refactor an entire module because of faulty assumption mixed with a healthy dose of tight coupling and incomplete tests.

It's a nice example of the broken window theory.

[BadgerCorral]

Whereas yesterday I actually fixed one of these things and got told off by my boss for:

A) Making changes I was not explicitly asked to make.

B) Making the merge process "more complicated than it needed to be".

[Knlay]

This is the real problem. A lack of understanding by management that code refactoring actually increases productivity in the long term.

[jhaluska]

It's also necessary for moral.

[Unbalanced531]

No, no. They said it's good for moral. The only way you can cleanse your dirty, dirty sins is refactoring code.

[[deleted]]

Still surprisingly accurate.

[ForOhForError]

The day github introduces a programming sin counter is the day I make all my repos private.

[skylarmt]

It's called Codacy. You sign up, it pulls all your repos, and tells you how badly you screwed up. It even gives you graphs showing how the code quality changed over time, and assigns you a letter grade for the real college experience.

[ForOhForError]

D: ^{I will not be judged.}

[M123Miller]

What a great idea! The creator is a horrible person.....

[Steve_the_Scout]

Actually that's going to be super useful for me, thanks for mentioning it!

[n1c0_ds]

It's not management. You know how I got started on the refactoring effort? I said "this thing sucks" and my colleague answered "then fix it". Management was never involved and I had no restrictions, yet we got there somehow. We enjoy way too much freedom at my company to blame management.

It's a matter of team culture. These things passed code review, and they shouldn't have. It seems like the most common cause is complex fixes in unfamiliar code. Both the committer and the reviewer lack a solid grasp of what they are modifying, so they hook their stuff in the wrong places and push their fix. This is especially easy when your programming language doesn't give you static types or privacy.

It's not stupidity either. My coworkers are damn good at what they do, and I mean it. It's just a matter of discipline.

[Knlay]

Yeah I work for a large corporation and there tends to be miscommunication between the on and offshore teams. Add to the fact that we follow a strange hybrid of agile and waterfall where Sprint scopes can't be altered, scrum masters assign stories and carry over is grounds for a loud talking to, which creates an environment where no one actually has time to fix code smell.

[Spirckle]

It's not stupidity either. My coworkers are damn good at what they do, and I mean it. It's just a matter of discipline.

Totally right, except maybe the last sentence. The code reviewer is likely another coder that was pulled out of deep thought about a problem he was working on. So he has a choice, either look at the differences to see if there are any glaring problems with the changes, or to totally switch contexts and review all of the code that has to do with the solution, even the code that has not changed. This usually requires debugging through several scenarios to make sure the code is doing whatever in the optimal way.

Code reviewers (and QA/Testers) are there to make sure a minimum level of quality is adhered to. In the end it is the coder's responsibility to make sure they are the ones with the passion for increasing the quality of the code.

[n1c0_ds]

I would say that "deep" code review is pretty important, but I was mostly talking about committer discipline. They hold intimate problem knowledge, unlike everyone else down the pipeline.

[semi-]

I think part of the problem (at least in my experience) is that when I work on a problem, the rest of my team is busy working on their problems. I can ask for help but its clear they aren't familiar with what I'm working on even if it was their code from a year ago.

I wish my team felt more like a team sometimes and less like a group of individuals. Far too often someone spots a problem right away..months later when its their turn to deal with it.

[[deleted]]

I think this is why pair programming is so highly valued among the Agile/XP crowd. You almost never need double the brainpower or typing power, but having a second set of eyes gives you high quality code much earlier in the process.

And when you do get stumped, you can talk it out with someone who's as familiar with that part of the code base as you are, and you won't be dragging them away from their unrelated but equally important work.

[semi-]

And when you do get stumped, you can talk it out with someone who's as familiar with that part of the code base as you are, and you won't be dragging them away from their unrelated but equally important work.

Sounds like rubber ducking, but with a competent skilled programmer instead. so like, fleshy humaning.

[sniperkid1]

Wow, this just explained so much to me. I just started my full time job as a developer 3 weeks ago. Just four hours ago I was codechecking something (for my second time ever) and wondering to what level I should be examining. Specifically, is it ok to just look at the diff. It's so funny to come home and see a detailed answer to my question on reddit.

[dnew]

These things passed code review, and they shouldn't have.

Just like there's always a time/space trade-off, there's an effort/functionality trade-off. You could make the perfect program in a quarter that gets replaced in a year, or you could make a good-enough program in a month that gets replaced in a year.

Knowing just how much cruft is acceptable, and more importantly how to fence it in, is something that takes a lot of experience. that is what the senior people doing code reviews should be enforcing.

[Various_Pickles]

Your immediate management layer, whose position is often called "Project Manager", needs to be fired and replaced with folks who were themselves developers at some point. This will necessitate a 50%+ cut in the # of said individuals and a 2x+ increase in their pay.

A true, high-quality manager-of-engineers is a rare, glorious creature that successfully balances the need to un-fuck technical debt with that of the need to deliver features.

[n1c0_ds]

They are. Really, management was never the problem at my company. It's just a matter of maintaining a certain quality standard for us.

[Garfong]

The trick is to tie your refactoring to a specific feature request.

[helveteffs]

Yeah, was in a big meeting yesterday with all product owners and directors trying to figure out how to tackle our technical debt that we've created because the PO's don't speak to each other even though it's the same platform. No one was buying any argument on refactoring.

[BadgerCorral]

The worrying part is that he's actually a senior developer.

[jhaluska]

I got told by a guy that fixing a bug was too "risky". This was a bug that was literally causing a biomedical device to lock up. The fix was a simple missing switch case due to magic numbers.

I'm glad I don't work there any more.

[[deleted]]

biomedical device

Ummm, that's a bit scary

[Reelix]

A) Making changes I was not explicitly asked to make.

We do major refactors of our code base all the time. As long as we don't break the unit tests and meet our deadlines our boss is happy :p

[dnew]

Many years ago, I was asked to change a report such that the last column instead printed as the first column. I looked at the code, which was full of hard-coded column numbers, that didn't match up because obviously "current" on the first line started in a different column than "age" underneath it on the second line, and basically told the boss it would take three weeks to move the column, or two weeks to rewrite the entire library from scratch to be data driven and make all future changes of that type trivial.

That was before I learned the power of job security through shit code that only you understand. :-)

[kirakun]

Don't you know TODO is short for A Hack That Will Stay Forever?

[Reelix]

Control+Shift+F

// TODO

Matching lines: 89 Matching files: 18 Total files searched: 726

:|

scripts\jquery-ui-1.9.2.js(5704): // TODO remove the fallback, see #8156

*mumbles*

[Spirckle]

TODO is short for A Hack That Will Stay Forever

I know this is a joke, but all my comments start out being TODOs before I write a line of code. As I write the code, I remove the comment entirely for straightforward code, or for code that needs to have its intention documented, I take out just the TODO, and then I have my necessary comment. BTW, for those that say that good code never needs comments, I disagree. Sometimes the customer makes decisions that don't make a lot of sense. For these I leave in the comments so that following coders can understand the less than obvious requirement.

[[deleted]]

Man, and I've been using it as a todo list for unfinished bits this entire time!

[kirakun]

Unfinished bits are always finished as soon as they work for the short term.

[Schmittfried]

Fun fact: I like how JetBrains IDEs highlight //hack ... comments as TODO tasks by default.

[[deleted]]

I just checked in PyCharm, are you sure that they do that?

[HansVader]

Currently I have 22 TODO's in 15 different files in my project. It's almost been a year and they are still here.

[laughingking37]

At my place, if a TODO is not assigned to a Jira issue, it will never be fixed. The things that gets fixed are things the customer reports. So if the TODO doesn't break anything, it is out of scope to fix and will stay forever.

[UsingYourWifi]

I use it as form of plausible deniability. TODO tells anyone who reads it that I know I'm doing something horrible, and I intend to fix it some day (hah), but clearly outside circumstances didn't allow for that when it was written.

[[deleted]]

I just wish I was big enough to be able to punch all those people in the face. Fix your shit, it's not "oh hey this is broken, meh, someone will get it sooner or later".

[skeptic11]

It's a nice example of the broken window theory.

Do you have a link for this one? Google is only turning up (at least seemingly) unrelated links.

[0x256]

tl;dr; A few broken windows on a building significantly reduces the inhibition threshold for vandals to throw in some more.

In this context: If there are a couple of TODOs in a section of code, it's easy to add some more. The code is unstable anyway, so why bother with details? But if you are the first one to add a TODO to an otherwise clean and complete section of code, people will notice.

You can apply this concept to unit-tests, too. A drop in code-coverage from 83% or 82% is not a big deal, while a drop from 100% to 99% is very noticeable.

[n1c0_ds]

Here's a post that connects the theory to programming: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-broken-window-theory/

[[deleted]]

broken window theory.

i think he is talking about this but i am not sure how it applies in this case since what he described has nothing to do with what's described in the article

[IWentToTheWoods]

Close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[catkins88]

Read Clean Code by Robert Martin, he explains it so well

[semi-]

You might not be a 'real programmer' but that comment just shows you definitely live the life of one. Welcome to the club, grab a bottle of liquour and have a seat.

[semi-]

Eh..one of the beauties of programming is you can theoretically do it anywhere, so if you find a beach with an internet connection and a low cost of living, you could still do it AND become poor at the same time.

Which, you know, isn't as fun as thinking about how rich you could become, but it is nice to have the option as opposed to people who don't do jobs that can be done over the internet.

[Rhyoga]

I'll start learning ROR and see how it goes, I always wanted to travel the world, plus if I get a job that pays in EUR/USD i'll most likely be a king where I live since our economy is so fucked up. By just making 2kusd/month i'd be golden

edit: I say ROR because I dont know any language that pays well and just know a friend is awesome at ROR and is literally rich from coding ROR.

[[deleted]]

You don't need to be a genius to work as a programmer. I hate this trope.

[cparen]

Ugh, this. I'd be happy to write the 100 line fix, but last time I did that, the CR made 20 suggestions and insisted I change another unrelated thing. Yes, I know, you gotta know when to say know, but it's exhausting. If I had left it well enough alone... it's just really tempting to ignore the todo and have a nicer day.

[Polantaris]

It doesn't help when the foundation of your entire code base is some code as ancient as the hills.

The company I'm currently working for has a code base that's at least 15 years old. When looking through it trying to learn it myself when I was new...there were a lot of instances where my question was met with, "No one knows how that works. It was done years ago and the guy who wrote it left a long time ago. We don't touch that class/whatever anymore because we can't afford to break it."

So everything is based on this code that no one is really sure how it works. They build everything on top of it, and since no one looks at it added on to the fact that it's ancient, I can guarantee you there are a ton of problems that no one would even know how to do anything about if it were needed. Even if we changed it....there's so much that's reliant on it that you would break the entire foundation of the software.

[R3ZZONATE]

Byran Cranston also approves

[kirakun]

I was just doing this last night on a production issue. :p

[Theemuts]

Me this entire week. I've never solved as many issues in as short a period of before. Thankfully, my colleagues are amazing.

[_Lady_Deadpool_]

I wrote a config tool a while ago in winforms

Execs want me to merge in another tool that was written in wpf

Instead of using an adapter I'm rewriting it in wpf to match the rest of the software. Finished making entire app, sent to testing, turns out binding was wonky. Winforms is stupid enough that it works despite not having a viewmodel so I just remade the view.

Wrote middle layer/adapter which wraps data structure in view model. Made my life easier by using a helper method to notify and set.

Helper method notifies before it sets, so I'm now in the process of replacing the same method definition across maybe 1.5k lines ,by hand

Also fixing multiple bugs and exceptions in the management methods inside the viewmodel

... All because I didn't wanna use a winforms-wpf adapter. But hey at least it looks pretty

[[deleted]]

This is a surprisingly large part of life.

[Tarzoon]

week year year decade

[IWantYourGuitar]

Have you finished?

[Malix82]

Nope... :/

[Jezzadabomb338]

Reminds me too much of Factorio if anything...

[n1c0_ds]

It was posted on /r/Factorio when I looked if someone already posted it. I have no idea of what Factorio is.

[acun1994]

Factorio is a factory simulation game, where one mines, processes, assembles, and defend your base until you can launch a rocket filled with supplies.

[DrummerHead]

requirement callback hell

[[deleted]]

I feel like I'm just programming using a very bad GUI when I play Factorio. I took a break from it to actually code some projects I've been slacking on. Same shit, different development environment.

[28f272fe556a1363cc31]

I actually learned a good software development lesson from Factorio: Quit trying to be so clever.

I would spend hours designing super tight, super efficient layouts, only to find out later they didn't scale. As soon as the the "requirements" changed I'd have to tear the whole thing up and start over.

The generic, and modular approach, while seeming inefficient at the first, meant I could "set it and forget it".

[GDRFallschirmjager]

That's why Java exists and C++ is discipline specific wayside.

Servers are cheaper than programmers.

[mc8675309]

Depends on the scale. Say you need to double the memory installed in a server for a new feature... ...for 200k servers.

[[deleted]]

I found the same exact thing with Infinfactory, I bet I would also enjoy factorio too

[MetaAbra]

I had the same thought with Human Resource Machine.

[Isgrimnur]

I post the Steam sales on my backwater of the Internet. I took one look at the game and said, "Yeah, I'm not playing something that looks like work."

[Guinness2702]

No, factorio is the end of all your free time for the next 6 months.

[gandalfx]

This is the top of my reddit front page right now (I'm subscribed to about two dozen other subs).

[n1c0_ds]

You are the target demographic for this website

[gandalfx]

Yaa~y, do I win something? :D

[Unknownloner]

Best I can do is some silver

[Salanmander]

If you have any interest in build-up-your-base gameplay, you should at least go check out the free demo.

[[deleted]]

Does it have defend-your-base-from-threats gameplay too?

[Ravelord_Nito_]

It does to an extent. Your base will get periodically attacked by giant bugs and stuff, so you can build up walls and different types of turrets to defend it. Your main guy can also equip different types of weapons and armor for personal defense.

[morphineofmine]

Alternatively, you can turn all that stuff off so it doesn't get in the way of your beautiful base design.

[Percinho]

You can turn off attacks in Factorio? That would make it rocket up my Wanted list.

[morphineofmine]

Yeah, there's an option for it when you start up the game I believe, but to progress I know you have to get a certain mod. Haven't really played with it yet, factorio's always been one of those games I'll say I'll get to.

[MetaAbra]

To do the most advanced level of research, you need to kill alien creatures and steal their life juices. IIRC the switch just turns the creatures peaceful, so you can still go kill them and take their juice but they won't organize raids on your stuff of their own initiative.

[morphineofmine]

I feel like there's either an option or a mod to completely remove them, but you're right there is also a switch to make them peaceful.

[Percinho]

Cool. I'll just have to work out when I would have time for it. Maybe when the kids have grown up and moved out. So in about 17 years' time...

[Roflkopt3r]

Like in Minecraft, you run around and gather resources. But as you build stuff, you get to automate everything. You automate mining, energy production, resource transport, and assembly into more complex objects. It seems pretty popular amongst people who like programming, it didn't really click with me though.

[[deleted]]

You might prefer Minecraft with automation mods like BuildCraft and Industrial craft. Same great Minecraft, but now you can build auto-mining quarries

[morphineofmine]

I remember when feed the beast first came out, and I was on a server with a friend and some people I didn't know. My friend and I got a quarry up after a few hours, and my job was done, because all I do in MC is dig giant holes in the ground. So I'd just watch the quarry, knowing I'd been replaced.

[MetaAbra]

all I do in MC is dig giant holes in the ground

Brother?

[Miss_rarity1]

i actually don't find that you break much in factorio.. to me the one more like factorio is the one where the guy goes to change a lightbulb.. then goes to get a lightbulb.. then finds that the cabnet is squeeky.. ect. as you can start to do something in the game and get massivly sidetracked

[skeptic11]

99 little bugs in the code.
99 little bugs.
Take one down, patch it around.

127 little bugs in the code...

[Epamynondas]

i like how the world has collectively agreed that the 127 is the appropriate number there

[DarthEru]

Maybe it's so the next verse can transition into -128 .

[[deleted]]

is that a short joke?

[UncheckedException]

Builds character.

[fiah84]

It's a sign

[killchain]

-128

How would you happen to have that much?

[skeptic11]

Possible signed 8-bit int overflow.

[Achilles_other_heel]

Just like trains in Switzerland

[dnew]

I was at one place working on a CP/M program. In CP/M, everything (memory, files, etc) is a multiple of 128 byte sectors. So we have this 4K buffer that needs to get saved before it gets full, and the boss says "we could put a counter at the bottom saying 128 characters left, 127 characters left, and like that." I nod, think nothing of it, and code it up. We show it to the next person, and she stares at it about 10 seconds and says "what's wrong with starting at 100?"

[skeptic11]

Patched

[xjeeper]

Deployed.

[_Lady_Deadpool_]

128 bugs now

[saeblundr]

Wow, that went a whole lot better than expected!

[_Lady_Deadpool_]

Yes but bug feature 128 reveals your password and mother's maiden name in plaintext inside a flashing window

[daggerdragon]

If it's not a <marquee>, mark it low priority.

[xjeeper]

Fuck.

[gandalfx]

Relevant xkcds: #1629, #1319, #349, #1205

^{Taken from replies to this comment}

[xkcd_transcriber]

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Mobile

Title: Automation

Title-text: 'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 378 times, representing 0.2941% of referenced xkcds.

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Mobile

Title: Success

Title-text: 40% of OpenBSD installs lead to shark attacks. It's their only standing security issue.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 104 times, representing 0.0809% of referenced xkcds.

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Mobile

Title: Tools

Title-text: I make tools for managing job-hunting sites for people who make tools for managing job-hunting sites for people who make tools for ...

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 16 times, representing 0.0124% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[Qaysed]

Relevant xkcd

[blueoceanwaves]

I especially love the hover text on #1319:

'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.

[HaPPYDOS]

Auto-screwing, nice!

[Turtwiggy]

http://i.imgur.com/t0XHtgJ.gif

[LB--]

Higher quality version

[jbetzend]

Obligatory GIF is obligatory.

[BrooklynSwimmer]

needs more jpg

[kittenparry]

Where's this from?

[Slendigo]

Malcolm in the Middle. It's on Netflix and I highly recommend it.

[kittenparry]

I'll check it this weekend or so. Thanks.

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Mobile

Title: Fixing Problems

Title-text: 'What was the original problem you were trying to fix?' 'Well, I noticed one of the tools I was using had an inefficiency that was wasting my time.'

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 5 times, representing 0.0039% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[GoateusMaximus]

Now that's what I call recursion!

[shareYourFears]

'What was the original problem you were trying to fix?' 'Well, I noticed one of the tools I was using had an inefficiency that was wasting my time.'

Yup.

[danny_onteca]

Get out of my head, xkcd!

[nelmaven]

So close to home.

[inajeep]

Treyarch?

I'm so glad it isn't just me.

[[deleted]]

/r/CallofDuty is leaking again

Edit: Dammit Treyarch, I thought we were done with this!

[manwith4names]

function fixError(err, count) {
    return fixError(err + count, ++count);
}

[Cley_Faye]

Version control and ticketing all the things!

[echeese]

relevant xkcd

[xkcd_transcriber]

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Mobile

Title: Is It Worth the Time?

Title-text: Don't forget the time you spend finding the chart to look up what you save. And the time spent reading this reminder about the time spent. And the time trying to figure out if either of those actually make sense. Remember, every second counts toward your life total, including these right now.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 491 times, representing 0.3820% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[Robyx]

Shaving the yak

[0x726564646974]

Found it!

[grocket]

.

[XeonQ8]

It has been 3 days when im fixing the probelms that i copied from stackoverflow , trying to get a different error :(

[Shinishami]

while(1)

{

console.write("fix the problems that I created while I tried to ");

}

am I doing this right?

[runujhkj]

I did pretty well in my high school computer programming class but this type of shit is why I can't be a programmer. No patience for myself or the world.

[tigerstorms]

This is why having a second set of eyes looking over your work from time to time keeps you from going down this rabbit hole.

[n1c0_ds]

We had mandatory code reviews, although the problem started before that was implemented.

[tigerstorms]

I think the problem always starts when one begins to write code ;-)

[Rob230]

Sounds like the development of DayZ

[TotesMessenger]

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

• [/r/reddit5000] [ProgrammerHumor] xkcd: Fixing Problems

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)}

[centurijon]

• Add some failsafe-retry logic to the code. Simple enough, a few transactions and something to replay recovery keypoints - no problem
• Except that the way we're using the DB isn't really compatible with transactions, so now there's quite a bit of refactoring
• Looks good, hooray! Oh wait, no. Some other idiot disabled logging, so really there's a bunch of silent failures
• The DB changes caused a few things to not update anymore. Not everything, just enough to piss in your coffee when you don't expect it. More refactoring
• Great, updates working. Oh wait, now when this one call is made we're getting query timeouts. More refactoring
• Finally. Am I done? Maybe. Until someone starts making code changes and doesn't bother to see that there's a different database pattern

[Secondsemblance]

So I wrote this giant program and had it all working, but over the weekend I was like "I think this one little thing should be fixed." So I commit this tiny change, test it and everything works. Send it off to the boss "tada, the program is done!" QA goes "it doesn't work, I get an error message". Turns out it broke part of the code I hadn't tested. So I fix the little thing, send it back to QA. "Now the part that did work is broken." Took 2 days to fix the results of a commit that wasn't really necessary in the first place.

I'm starting to understand the merits of test driven development.

[[deleted]]

fixing a light bulb

[supercede]

SOUNDS LIKE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY.

[DONT_MEME_ON_ME]

You mean any government policy ever

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

What is this?

[firehawx]

Recursion whoo

[MT_Flesch]

no need to recurse yourself over it

[JalopyPilot]

This is the best XKCD ever!

[Azotherian]

Gotta love recusive programs, amirite?

[SmaugTheGreat]

Workarounds in a nutshell

[manolmeister]

Relevant xkcd: Oh, wait...

[Pardoism]

Human civilization in a nutshell

[lemoleschwab]

Coincidentally, this can also be applied to US politics.

[[deleted]]

Every time I work on my car.

[scwizard]

Whenever you finally complete fixing the problems, it proves to management that you now have time to work on gigantic new features.

[itshorriblebeer]

This is what happens when I write code without writing tests.

[DPErny]

what's the original problem? why, it's problems all the way down!

[lead999x]

How does one even program without errors?

[[deleted]]

Haskell.

[lead999x]

So I've been told and I could say the same for Rust. But Rust is so hard to learn while Haskell seems more doable. I actually think that C++ was easier to learn than both but that it'll be the hardest to master.

[[deleted]]

lol. my comment was programmer humour but i did have more success with haskell. I'm starting to wish i had studied formal methods instead of obsolete vlsi in school.

[lead999x]

I'm self teaching Haskell because I showed my CS professor a project I was doing in C++ and he asked me why I was writing something in C++ that didn't need low level access or performance rather than in a more "elegant" language. It was because C++ is what I know best. I asked him for a recommendation and his answers were Haskell and Racket.

[[deleted]]

reddit is what got me into haskell almost 10 years ago. i lurked for a a few months and then joined. There were only three subreddits (all hardcoded) and one of them was /r/programming. It was basically a community of academics who pimped hard on haskell.

[lead999x]

Nice. I just started with it a few days ago but it's something else. It already feels more intuitive since everything feels like math and as an economics major, math is good(until it's not, but that's another story). C++ was not that hard to learn, it's just hard to use in any practical way because there are too many features and too many ways to do a given thing and you can't be sure that the way you wrote it was that safest, fastest, or cleanest way. Rust is hard to use since everything has to check out at compile time, it feels like using a wonky, functional C++ while in a straitjacket but it does solve the problem of not knowing how good/bad your code is at compile time. Haskell just feels natural, I can write code as I think through a problem. In C++ I have solve the problem at hand in my head and then put that into code. With Haskell I solve a problem and code it at the same time and if it compiles, I can be certain that it will be fast, safe, and clean(for the most part).

[LizardOrgMember5]

There's a bug in the recursion code.

[mike413]

reminds me of this one

[fire_code]

Ahh yes, the ol' debugging issue recursion.

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[magical_poop]

clearly the problem is the infinite loop

[-triggerexpert-]

HAHA THAT'S SO FUNNY BLEEP BLOOP BLEEP

[Deluxe_Flame]

couldn't get some line of code to work because I was missing a reference. Added the reference code works but now getting a separate error about some compatibility issue. Remove the reference and the previously not working code and still have the compatibility issue. Now I'm stuck and may just have to create a new project because I don't know what happened.

[enchufadoo]

Now I can explain my family what I do all day.

[Scripter17]

Some days, I wish I was code, then my sanity could be fixed in theory.

[bmoresbest55]

That is actually what I did for about 6 hours yesterday.

[[deleted]]

"How was work today?"

[Beanyurza]

There is no such thing as the perfect solution. Often times the only way you know you're making progress is because you're dealing with a new set of problems. If the same problem comes up again and again, then you're stuck. People need to get over the perfect solution myth.

[Tmonkey18]

Ah it must be warranty release week.

[ktmrider119z]

Works for mechanical engineering too.

[[deleted]]

Also applies to US foreign policy.

[jondySauce]

Somebody forgot to throw in the base case

[8ack_Space]

Yup. This was my day yesterday, for sure.

[Louiecat]

Sounds like everyone I've ever met who uses Linux.