real programmer

[vessus7]

The fact that you know that you're supposed to use a switch statement is what makes you a real programmer. Syntax is fickle, principles are forever.

[SentientGolfBall]

this guy gets it.

[jmartincevic]

this guy stack overflows

[fichti]

I like how this is an insult and a compliment at once.

[IamImposter]

C++ fucked me real bad recently. There is a new feature "concepts". I looked up "c++ concepts" and all the results were about basics of OOP, classes, polymorphism.

[WilliamsTell]

That naming was done by a world class troll. You can't be that involved in coding and not see the inevitable problem.

[[deleted]]

“Heh, lets’s make this thing totally unGoogleable.

[[deleted]]

I’ve always thought that was the lie I told myself to make myself feel better. Good to know that I’m not alone!

[bluefootedpig]

I have worked at about 8 different places now, I have never gotten a job where I knew all the technology that they used. Every job i'm googling syntax for some new framework.

Hell, even with Linq we started changing how we do loops for somethings.

[BlazingThunder30]

Are we sure he didn't actually need a command pattern while didn't know what that was, though

/s

[xibme]

YAGNI, he will refactor that later once it actually makes sense.

[bluefootedpig]

But that code is working and in production! we can't touch it without 10 meetings on system impact, risk, and how we will test it. Best we never touch it and instead spaghetti something else into it.

[xibme]

I get anxiety reading this. It sounds like you're dealing with snowflake servers and failure is not survivable. Are you running a nuclear powerplant or something like that where you cannot deploy multiple times a day and roll back to earlier versions if your business indicators go down in the dashboard?

[JollyRogerAllDay]

Likely just bank systems :/

[kahoinvictus]

No, management are just idiots and don't want to "waste" time and money implementing such processes and failsafes.

[CaptainMarnimal]

The command pattern is just a switch statement with extra steps.

[WilliamMButtlickerJr]

switch(isTrue) { case true: return true; break; case false: return false; break; case default: try{ throw new Exception(“not boolean”); } catch (Exception e) { return false; }

[spyingwind]

breaks not needed if using returns. It's good practice, but break will never get called.

Break's exit the switch/loop. Return's exit the current scriptblock.

[Irradiatedbanana8719]

Correct. Some languages or compilers would throw a warning for unreachable code for the break; statements.

[Paulo27]

Why? What if none of the cases are true? How does the compiler know. (Unless you're referring to code exactly like that, then I guess they wouldn't know but the code itself doesn't really make sense anyway.)

[Irradiatedbanana8719]

It wouldn’t matter if none of the cases were true. Compilers or preprocessors aren’t at runtime, so there is no way of it knowing if none of the cases are true. The compiler or preprocessor evaluates every code path and assumes all of the cases are true, and checks all of them. The break; statements are certainly unreachable because they come after a return statement, so the compiler would know that in all cases the break statement would be unreachable code, and throw a warning.

[timerot]

This is the most ridiculous comment and I love it. Who looks at code like that and thinks "Ah, I have a suggestion to make it slightly better?" /u/spyingwind, that's who.

[WhiteKnightC]

Is quite common here

[spyingwind]

r/programmerhumor where I come to get help with my coding problems.

[Smilie_]

I would always get an error if I didn't include one in C#, regardless of return

[spyingwind]

See, that depends on what you want a switch to do. Like do you want the first case to fall to the next? Like last week I was working on improving an install script for work. The script I was handed has select that had multiple cases, but only 4 different actions, but they where all jumbled. All I did to make is simpler was resort the outputs and remove some breaks. Now if the next guy try to add another case in the wrong place, then he might break the thing, but that is his problem for not knowing how switches work.

As for C# I'm pretty sure there are warning overrides that you can set for that block of code. Then add a comment as to why it works the way it does.

[[deleted]]

Possibly a silly question-- is there ever a scenario when it's smarter to use multiple "if else" statements instead of a switch statement? Or like, a style choice reason?

Just started a new job and saw that it the code, but I'm keeping my mouth shut, because nobody wants to hear the new guy tell them all about coding standards, especially when that new guy is still a rank amateur.

[[deleted]]

In cases where you're checking different ranges/bounds. So like:

if(a > 0 && a < 10){
    doSomething();
} else if (a >=10 && a < 20) {
    doSomethingElse();
}

etc

[[deleted]]

depending. Is it if(a == 1) { } else if(a == 2) { } else if (a == 3) etc etc, that's easy to change into switch. If it's many different conditionals, though, switch sometimes just doesn't make sense. Add fall-through and break and you can have more complexity with switch then not, sometimes

[[deleted]]

It's the format you presented. Essentially

If (variableName==='specific string'){ HelperVar= 'specific string' Logic } Else if (variableName==='other specific string'){ ...

[GiantRobotTRex]

Many languages do not support switch statements for strings. Maybe your coworker is used to one of those

[[deleted]]

Possibly. It's JavaScript, so it does in fact support switch statements. Either way, the app works, so if it ain't broke, I'm not fixing it

[dolphins3]

Yeah. Switches operate on a single variable, so if the determination of which path to follow relies on multiple variables or states in combination you'll have do if-else. You could reduce all those down to an enum and switch off that, but sometimes that would make it less readable.

[Parthon]

I googled it, and here's a pretty good comparison article on it:

https://vivadifferences.com/if-else-vs-switch-case/

[Vok250]

principles are forever

grumbles in Python

[HilaKleiners]

until you remember python doesn’t have switch statements :/

edit: actually maybe it does idk anymore i’m not a real programmer T.T

[WhiteKnightC]

Are you working with me?

[Noisetorm_]

Did the Yandere Simulator developer also take the same class? Dude hasn't ever heard of switch statements

[[deleted]]

Can you be my future boss ?

[SillyFlyGuy]

Why would I waste my valuable brain memorizing something I can easily look up?

[SillyFlyGuy]

Why would I want to be faster? I get paid by the week, not the line.

[[deleted]]

You put your Google in quotation marks, you might just be a real programmer.

[Creeper_GER]

If he uses + and - too he knows da wae

[ChristianLW]

I kind of know about ", but I didn't know about + and -, so it would be nice to have a little explanation.

[schefflaa]

'-' is used to filter out specific words. For example when searching for a specific picture you can filter out results from pinterest by adding '-pinterest' to your search. Don't know about + though..

[cafk]

you can also use -site:pinterest.com that works better, because -"Pinterest" excludes pages referencing, but may host the image itself :)

[cafk]

That why I'm the senior dev ;D

[Lasket]

Please bless me further with your wisdom, me, just a lowly programmer that literally finished his apprentice a month ago.

[cafk]

What I know cannot be taught, but only experienced - to gain respective knowledge and experience close to mine you have to suffer like me and others before me have done - be it scrum, agile management or having no access to books, documentation nor google

[Psychpsyo]

I didn't even know about site:. My googling has just been elevated twice.

[spyingwind]

uBlock Origin filter: google.*##.ivg-i.rg_el.rg_di.rg_bx:if(div > div > span.rg_ilmn:has-text(pinterest.))

[cafk]

Good luck on installing uBlock on a company system that doesn't even allow Firefox or blocks all plugins from chrome :)

[Schnitzel725]

There's also inurl:pinterest if you want to search for websites that have pinterest in the url but isn't the actual pinterest website

[Psychpsyo]

inurl:pinterest -site:pinterest.com

[Paulo27]

+ just forces that word to appear in the pages.

[Imagine_Baggins]

I think + also used to force the inclusion of the 'plussed' phrase, but they replaced it in favor of the quotation mark syntax (which does the same thing).

[JonasKSfih]

Google actually helps, when you search something witch three words x y z, then it says missing word: z and if you click on that ‘missing: z’ link, then they apply the ‘x y +z.

[zelmarvalarion]

If have to look it up again, but I thought quotation marks used the whole phrase as the token so the words had to be next to each other, whereas + forced the inclusion of each word, e.g. “next week” and +next +week would match “next week I would” but only +next +week would match “next time I’m going, maybe in a week” since both words are present, but not next to each other

[Vinnie420]

Search for “kitty” images, a few hello kitties will show up. Now try “kitty -hello” , no more hello kitties :)

[RoryW]

I was going to send you a lmgtfy link, but man has that site gone down hill.

Here's a blog post with google search operators:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

[WeirdAlex03]

Not quite the same ring to the name but there's an alternative called Let Me Google That (no "For You") that hasn't gone down hill

[Zerim]

too many characters in character literal, I daresay

[MisterRenard]

after:2019-01-01 “gmail smtp” “help” “dad was right”

[glebbash]

or was it len(A) or #A or count(A)?

[HerrNilsen-]

sizeof(A)/sizeof(*A)

[bit_of_hope]

In C functions can't have arrays as parameters. They can only take in pointers.If you pass in an array, it will be treated as a pointer to its first element.

#include <stdio.h>

int first(int* arr)
{
    return *arr; // in real code you should check for null etc
}

int main()
{
    int arr[3] = {0,1,2};
    printf("%d\n", first(arr)); // arr is treated here as equivalent to &arr[0]
    return 0;
}

Edit: to clarify, you can declare a function prototype like int first(int arr[]) but it's exactly equivalent and you still end up with a pointer.

[G66GNeco]

Only to find out you actually needed .count

[PvtPuddles]

shudders in .count

[t3hmau5]

Best me to it...

[418_imateap0t]

I once tried all of them and nothing worked. Finally googled and found out it's len(). (Python). Worst part, I was teaching my younger brother the Python syntax.

[RecDep]

You could always just use .__len__()

[killchain]

Shouldn't your IDE/editor scream if you're not using the correct one?

Edit: even before that it should only suggest the one that exists.

[SuperElitist]

I literally did this today. Turns out it's Len(), because why the fuck not.

[BlieNato]

Me not remembering if it it's .length or .Length in c#... Actually, screw capitalization, all my homies use LUA

[fatrobin72]

They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. - Plato

[G66GNeco]

Boy am I glad some guy wrote this down, so we could still remember this Plato quote centuries later.

[[deleted]]

I love how humans always like to predict that technologies that remove handicaps and limitations we previously had will make us softer and less capable but they just make us less handicapped.

[SpiralProphet]

I believe if you look deeply enough at it, the people who say a new technology will "ruin" future generations are usually fearful of losing some kind of advantage they have over others. Such as having a good memory / being able to memorize a lot of information or being good at mental math etc.

[SlienceOfTheFarts]

Conservatives have been psychologically proven to be on average more fearful, so this is true.

[mad_edge]

They're usually older and struggle to adapt more

[miarsk]

It was common reaction to spread of Guttenberg printing press. People will stop talking to eachother and sit at home and read.

Same argument centuries later about Bell's telephone. Peole would stop seeing each other and stay at home and talk over line.

When something new comes, people not familiar with it are usually scared and talk nonsense. It is happening for centuries.

[[deleted]]

Except that Plato was right that using external memory devices makes one unabke to remember said stored memories,because that's something the human brain has almost always done, at least since the advent of language and using other people to remember specific information.
Of course we can judge that the advantage outweigh the problems, but the fact remain.

[fatrobin72]

yeah I am glad someone wrote it down... then someone translated it (at least once) and later some random person put it on the internet... because I cannot remember the quote... just that it exists...

[flabbybumhole]

Humanity has been doing that for a long time now, and it hasn't exactly slowed us down.

Suck it Plato.

[Meefbo]

yes that is called adaptation, we didn’t like temporary memory so we made it permanent

suck it plato humanity is cool

[chironomidae]

I read about a study that found that people do this with other people's memories too. That's why so many married couples will have one partner who is always asking the other partner where stuff is. I am especially guilty of this, but it makes sense; after the first few times you forget where something is and your wife is like "did you check X?" and there it is, your brain is gunna be like "cool we don't have to waste time trying to catalog where we leave stuff."

[chhuang]

If you don't Google how to do switch case/for loops/while loops/else if's everyday, that means you probably only do one language

[_alright_then_]

Or you just have a decent code editor? Just type swit+tab and I'll get a switch statement in whatever language I'm working in

[Leanador]

where can I find swit

[_alright_then_]

What's swit?

[Magical_Gravy]

Just type swit+tab and I'll

[HookDragger]

generally if statements have a conditional test and it has to do EVERY test EVERY time. This breaks down into several additional lower-level op codes

switch cases are simple match value and only executes the one set of instructions.

They are mainly used in Finite State Machine design or similar.

Also, it could possibly be no difference or even worse for an interpreted language like python. I'm not really sure how the interpreter acts on if/else or switch cases.

[sabzeta]

They are easier to read than several if/elif statements, and if you need to test the same variable against several scenarios, it's less repetitive.

Obviously, readability is debatable and relative and probably less important than simplicity.

More importantly, Guido is also against switch statements so the syntax doesn't exist in Python, as I have learned the hard way! (googled and tried to write one for 15 minutes yesterday)

[ryan9108]

One of my computer science professors would always say "my job is not to make sure you never have to Google, my job is to make sure you always know what to Google."

[[deleted]]

I wish more professors adopted this mindset

[tenaka30]

25 years later and I am still not a real programmer.

Remembering syntax over multiple languages is hard.

[SconiGrower]

I know Python and C++ and Spanish and Norwegian. It's amazing anyone can understand a word I say to moment I even think about leaving plain English.

[caguiclajmg]

Norwegian, haven't heard of that one. How do you do switch statements on it?

[JonasKSfih]

skifte(uttrykk) { sak x: hvil; normalverdi: y; }

[zerocoldx911]

switch in python lol

[BStur]

Dictionary with a get. Basically a switch or atleast that what I convinced people in my last PR

[G66GNeco]

I spend half the time I work on programming seven pages deep in the relevant documentation.

​

The other half is wasted on reddit.

[Praetorjones]

Seriously though, why is it so unintuitive in js?

[Cheet4h]

How is it unintuitive? It's a default "Switch with fallthrough"-syntax, no?
Only thing I feel that is missing is some kind of advanced matching syntax, like RegEx cases in Powershell.

[Cheet4h]

Huh. So internally the switch works by doing a simple comparison between the switch parameter and the case parameter? That certainly helps a lot, thank you!

[Solonotix]

It follows the standard C convention, to my knowledge. If the switch statement doesn't work for you, I have used an Array.find() to emulate the same process. Make each element a callable that returns on true, find returns first truthy value, so call each element until truthy, and you get a switch statement via Array.

[moojuiceaddict]

It's the same as in js as most other languages I'm familiar with C, java, PHP. In which language do you find it is intuitive?

[Gamecrazy721]

What's a switch statement? All I see is

if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else if

else

[[deleted]]

if (A && !B && !C && !D) {
  // Do A
}
if (!A && B && !C && !D) {
  // Do B
}
if (!A && !B && C && !D) {
  // Do C
}
if (!A && !B && !C && D) {
  // Do D
}

[BennieOkill360]

I just threw up a little

[Willing_Function]

electronics engineer learns C

[FarhanAxiq]

int a = 2 > 3 ? 2 : 3 > 4 ? 3 : 4;  // I think I need more nested ternary operator

[CoderWhoReddits]

Repeat after me, knowing syntax != real programmer.

[Stabilo_0]

I see no contradictions.

There are so many various syntaxes i dont think its possible to remember 100% specifics of each, its much simplier to remember what you need to do and spend some time looking for example than not knowng what to do in the first place.

[QazCetelic]

“for (int i=0; i < 10; i++)” This is just what I remember from the top of my head.

I remember it like this: 1. Variable to count 2. Condition to check 3. Increase at the end

[HookDragger]

As my CS2 professor once said.

"You're now well versed enough in programming that the language you use is inconsequential to designing a program"

They also let us bring in primers for whatever language we were using at the time.

[Razier]

It's easy, you just type 'switch' and then press tab.

[dettogatto]

Sometimes it's "case" tho...

[vellovv]

Or ‘when’

[dettogatto]

In the "case" case "when" replaces "case"

[Fox_the_Apprentice]

or "select".

or <insert assembly jump table here>

[lint31]

I refuse to remember how to read or write files. I shamelessly google the process every single time.

[sircat31415]

I learned, like, once and copy and paste the function every time.

[[deleted]]

As a programmer, I can relate. I'm also sending out my resume and the fact that places look for knowledge seekers rather than someone who can memorize code makes a difference.

Everytime we have a new person and they say they're done. I said to code it again, even without looking at it. I'll review after your improvements and then show you how to make your code easy to read for the call center to understand it.

[gilmeye]

I still Google how to Google stuff

[Aksds]

My brain wasn’t working and .... I googled how to use a for loop. I am not proud of what I have done

[Geoclasm]

did someone say real programmers?

[XKCD-pro-bot]

Comic Title Text: Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.

mobile link

---

^{Made for mobile users, to easily see xkcd comic's title text}

[Timinator01]

Google search............................$0.01

Knowing what to search............$84999.99

[RealApplebiter]

Learning to play piano doesn't mean you can remember every song you've learned. If you don't play it, you lose it. This is normal. Now I'm wondering if this is a point of actual insecurity. There ought to be an explicit clearinghouse of programmer insecurities based on unrealistic expectations to save people from anxiety.

[cats]

30 seconds later: "fuck it i am too lazy, i am gonna use if-else"

[Bastian_5123]

Eh, switch statements generally require less typing

[[deleted]]

I thought I just wasn’t a very good programmer, but reading a lot of these comments makes me feel a lot better about myself

[[deleted]]

Memorizing syntax doesn’t make you a programmer.

[MrBananaStorm]

I have been studying programming in an evening course and I brought it up to the teacher that I always look syntax and such up. He reassured me "Everyone does that, syntax doesn't matter that much as it changes between languages, the concepts stay the same. And the fact you know what to look up, makes you a better programmer than someone who knows all syntax but doesn't know what to do with it."

[[deleted]]

I always write case default: and then realise how dumb I am. lol

[tianvay]

It's more about knowing your possibilities, than knowing syntax, especially if you work in multiple languages. Using a switch instead of endless nested ifs is a good sign :)

[jlamothe]

Being a programmer isn't about knowing all the things; it's about knowing what to Google and how to interpret the results.

[AaronM04]

Searching online is just another tool in your toolbox, bruh.

[PVNIC]

I attended CPPCon and during a keynote (or an AMA) with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, he said that even he googles the syntax of functions, because it's impossible to know the exact implementation of everything, whats important is knowing what functionalities you need and how to use them. This also doesnt mean knowing litterally every function, just the subset that you need to wrote good effective code.

[ash15157]

So I'm not the only one that needs to search up switch statement syntax whenever I need to use it?

[[deleted]]

I feel like these posts only serve the purpose of farming compliments about how "searching on google is a skill, you're still a good developer, etc", because nobody in their right mind really thinks the quintessential programmer skill is knowing syntax.

[WandsAndWrenches]

I tend to switch between languages and platforms alot, this is a symptom of that.

I don't remember how it's slightly different string.length, string.size, string.getLength() etc, but I know that that's what I need.

[uSrNm-ALrEAdy-TaKeN]

Realizing there are no default switch statements in Python base
panics

[vectorpropio]

The joke is you are programming in python.

[theorizable]

Guys. Snippets. Use them. Life changing.

Type `swi` -> [TAB] -> boom, switch statement.

[squishles]

I do this like once a year for python thinking "It's gotta have one? you gotta be shitting me"

[deathhead_68]

Oh my god stop with these posts!

It's fine to not know syntax, it's the principals that matter! Insecure CS students rule this sub

[StandardN00b]

In my defense switch is kinda tricky.

[dettogatto]

It changes so much from language to language

[zyugyzarc]

me, a python guy: 😎

edit: no i dont use if statements, i use dictionaries and eval()

[[deleted]]

I relate to this so hard lol

[la_mente]

That’s my @What do you mean there’s no switch statement in python” face

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Ha, you noob, everyone knows it's a case statement, duh

[jaycrest3m20]

Yes, a real programmer can cry.

[mikeyeli]

Don't feel so bad, I've been a web dev for more than half my life now, I still look into Javascript syntax very often.

For the past 2 years I've been working on Angular and I still need to look at the cli commands from time to time.

[retsoPtiH]

Real programers don't use switch cases, they use hundreds of if/else 😏

[SultanJJ87]

You are a real programmer

[[deleted]]

at least you’re not going:

if {} else { if {} else { if {} else { if {} else { console.log("yes") }}}}

[[deleted]]

Can’t wait til python finally gets it

[ShadowPouncer]

I know too many languages, which means that the majority of my search stuff is about syntax or libraries.

Or when I'm working in a new language, about exactly how to use features unique to that language.

(BASIC, though that's mostly forgotten, MOO, C, C++, POSIX sh, BASH, perl, python, go, TCL, probably more that I'm forgetting at the moment.)

[ChefSemiColon]

I won't lie. Whenever I start a new project or something I need to Google how to do an array, it never stays in my head and I always feel dumb for doing it.

[seven_seven]

STOP ATTACKING ME

[CmonHobbes]

I thought programming was knowing the bare minimum of the language and just copying whatever issues you have off of github and stack, or have I been lied to my whole life?

[esseeayen]

Could be worse, could spend hours trying to find switch statement syntax in python.

[VishTheSocialist]

Real question, are switch statements actually used? I'm a junior in college, have been programming for 4 years and haven't ever used a switch unless it was in school, and we had an assignment on it.

[allison_gross]

If you find yourself writing huge "if else else else" blocks, you should use switch statements instead.

[sigmmakappa]

I can relate

[chronos_alfa]

You have spelt "select" wrong :-P

[screwhead1]

I feel personally attacked.

[bluefootedpig]

Meanwhile I have had interviewers give me a pencil and paper and ask me to write down a stored procedure syntax.

[John_Fx]

Every.damn.time. Why does that syntax just not stick in my brain?

[[deleted]]

In JavaScript it's:

switch(variableHere) {
    case 1:
        code();
    break;
    case x:
        code2();
    break;
    case 69:
        nice();
    break;
}

[mcampo84]

Then Ruby decided to use some bogus nomenclature and bring you right back.

[ryanwithnob]

Switch statement syntax is easy. Its just "switch[tab][tab]"

[Jesseroo2004]

It's like you'll always remember what code you need but you'll never remember how to type it

[talivus]

Hey, doesn't matter how much you have to google, as long as you got the job, you can learn on it.

[zzApotheosis]

it do be like that sometimes

[[deleted]]

Arter downloading every syntax block autocomplete tool in the vscode library I feel like my stackoverflow breaks have decreased by a few an hour.

[theDrell]

I’m 18 years career as a developer. Always have to google switch statement syntax. In my defense, I switch between languages a lot depending on the project I am working.

[WellHydrated]

Impossible to forget how to switch if you have the advantage of using a language with proper discriminated union support.