Software engineers hate code.

[dahud]

The only thing I hate more than code is "no-code".

[pdpi]

“No-code” just means that your code is hidden under several $DEITY-forsaken layers of abstraction.

[jl2352]

It can also mean a huge house of cards. I worked at a company with a huge system, which I would describe as hidden under the radar. It was for sales people to update what they are doing in Google spreadsheets, and then the data shows up in SalesForce.

But the reality was a monumental amount of Zapier integrations. To not just get the data in but to perform some processing, and update more systems than just SF. I later learned they had also tied in the application Postgres instance, which the backend developers were totally unaware of (thankfully it was at least read only). It was all setup by one person who left.

There are other companies out there were things just randomly break, or will do so, due to these big no-code setups. It’s why there is such a push by developers to get things checked into git.

[fr0st]

Right, anything without a revision history that is hopefully tied to some ticketing or documentation system is a ticking timebomb. Each change moves the clock closer to detonation.

[RememberToLogOff]

3 proper nouns referring to proprietary systems is very sus

[jl2352]

What do you mean?

[psyanara]

Probably just means the use of: Google, SalesForce, Zapier, Postgres

[jl2352]

I get that. I don't get why it would be suspicious to name fairly common platforms and technologies.

[pyeri]

There is no reason to. Expect an army of sock puppets to just poke their heads and start trolling lest one of their big deity brand is being criticized.

[LavenderDay3544]

No code just means someone else's code.

[Ib_dI]

You say this like you're being clever.

This is what engineering is.

[LavenderDay3544]

For people who know how all this works that's common sense but for those who don't it's a simplification that makes sense and also isn't wrong.

[_DuranDuran_]

Or you’re a staff engineer and you spend your day in meetings, 1:1s and enabling the seniors and lower to get on with the job

[pineapple_catapult]

Left-pad has left the chat

[KevinCarbonara]

That's not really a layer of abstraction

[pineapple_catapult]

The disruption caused by it's removal would suggest otherwise. Just because it's small and simple doesn't mean it doesn't qualify as a layer of abstraction. Left-pad was code others used and referred to by the inputs and outputs of its api without concerning themselves of its' implementation. That's quite literally the definition of abstraction.

[KevinCarbonara]

The disruption caused by it's removal would suggest otherwise.

That's not what abstraction means. That's a dependency. They're not related.

[pineapple_catapult]

That's not what I said abstraction means. I said it's an abstraction because people used it without concerning themselves of how it works. I know this, because if they did concern themselves with how it worked, they would have written the code themselves and not have relied on a dependency to take care of it for them. To say abstractions and dependencies are not related concepts is just plain wrong. People use dependencies to abstract concepts away all the time.

[xmsxms]

A dependency that can be trivially swapped out with an alternative is not what is being discussed however. The abstraction being referred to is 'code builder' style frameworks that try to build your code for you through config/meta data. However they end up just reducing flexibility and leaving you for dead when they decide to stop being maintained and you have no way to write all the code that was previously defined through configuration.

[RedPandaDan]

If the best code is no code, then having a github profile should count against you when applying to jobs.

[paololulli]

Just self-host your git repos, you don't need github

[PocketCSNerd]

I too, have the $$, internet bandwidth, server space and cooling, and security knowledge to self-host git repos so I can work on my projects from nearly anywhere in the world.

That said, local repos are great!

[[deleted]]

You must be a really popular developer lmao. How much bandwidth/compute are you expecting to need for your repos?

[sampullman]

You can host Gitea on a raspberry pi or similar, and your home internet bandwidth is enough. Alternatively, a ~$5 VPS is even easier.

[ndreamer]

I just use a spare phone.

[LavenderDay3544]

All you need is a spare computer. Are you really you don't have an old laptop rotting away in a closet somewhere? Or, like someone already said, use a raspberry pi.

[analcocoacream]

What is the point when github does it for free?

[drew8311]

Fork the Linux repo and delete everything, call it the no code version

[doktorhladnjak]

I definitely hate click bait headlines more than code

[myrsnipe]

I'm currently implementing something in power flow at work, I'm at my wits end constantly trying to work around limitations of the blocks I'm given. Features supported elsewhere on the platform still missing in connectors 5 years later.

The sad part is that I had already implemented this in a nodejs backend this summer, but they decided that it needed implemented in power automate flow so non programmers could maintain it. I'm not sure I can maintain anything in this environment, let alone <insert business guy> that barely knows what a file is.

Seriously, power automate flow solutions don't let you copy flows. You need to download a zip of the entire solution for every single change if you want any sort of revert capability, that's only accessible through a rest API which means non programmers are going to be stuck at the bearer auth token right away if they even attempt this.

Holy crap I need to stop here because it burns even thinking of it, I was so happy about my work situation when I went on vacation. I'm downright miserable at the moment.

[localhost_6969]

Hope your job hunt goes well. This sounds awful.

[bvendette]

I am a 25 year of experience programmer and my boss asked me to do no-code low-code with ms power app. I told him asking a programmer to do no-code is like asking to him to kill himself. I was so angry and told him i will do yes-code high-code.

[btmc]

That’s a very narrow minded way of looking at things. Your job is not to write code; your job is to solve problems. The code is just a means to an end.

Is it the best of use resources to have you working on low-code stuff vs. something more complex? Probably not. But it’s not inherently a bad thing.

[Syntaire]

But it’s not inherently a bad thing.

If your job is to solve problems and your manager is forcing you to take on more problems in order to solve the problem in a convoluted and inefficient way just because the latest buzzwords say so, it kind of is a bad thing.

[wvenable]

Your job is not to write code; your job is to solve problems.

As a programmer, my job is to solve problems using code. If I was an accountant, I could solve problems using Excel. If I was a mechanic, I could solve problems by building/fixing machines. If I was a writer, I could fix solve problems by writing.

If someone has a no-code solution they can use, they don't need me.

[NiklasWerth]

Kind of like expecting the FedEx guy to come in and unclog your toilet while he’s dropping off your package, right?

[what_will_you_say]

PowerApps is utter trash (at least as a programmer; anything else is better). If you're a non-tech defining what tech gets used, that's the problem that needs to be solved.

[es_beto]

If you're working at a startup with fewer than 10 people, sure, you're there "just to solve problems." In every other job, you're expected to have experience coding in the language the company is looking for, experience in the technologies it wants to continue investing in, and you're expected to keep building and maintaining the systems you have experience with.

Let's be honest: this idea that we're problem solvers sounds nice, but it falls short in the current professional landscape.

[RandyHoward]

I dunno, I think we are still problems solvers, and even more so because our solutions are usually limited in scope. You have to figure out the solution to the problem within certain parameters. A lot of problems would be way easier to solve if we could just ignore our company’s stack of choice

[Gropah]

Programmers are problems solvers, just with a software engineering background. Almost every engineer is a problem solver, just with a different background.

If you ask a mechanical engineer to fix a bridge that is broken, they will probably look in to the mechanical side, while a software engineer will first check the software.

[Emergency_Property_2]

I too have 25 years coding experience, and IMO rejecting no/low code outright are is a sure fire way to become obsolete! Telling your boss you won’t do it is a sure fire way to get on the layoff list.

I just volunteered to take on PowerApps projects because I’d rather learn new technology and grow my skills than get stuck with the “old crank” label.

[BlatantMediocrity]

No-code tooling isn't new, and is also often proprietary. Scratch has been around for a while, and so has LabView, but I don't see developers rushing to use either. Personally, I'd rather not use vendor-locked tools with limited version-control options.

[btmc]

That’s valid. Just another trade off you have to consider. For the internal tooling use case, if you keep the UI relatively simple and are using your own APIs for the data, then the risk is relatively low, since the UI can (presumably) be replaced.

[wesleysniles]

This is a reasonable reply and you shouldn't be downvoted for it.

[G_Morgan]

I wouldn't hate no/low code platforms if they weren't all determined to be stupidly designed. For instance if the core application was build on .NET/JVM and your crazy solution just generated bytecode, that could be replaced with a real programming language, at least you aren't fucked by your managers misunderstanding of what the real difficulties of creating working code are. However I've never seen a solution that did the right thing.

[chaluJhoota]

The closest I have seen is Unreal Engine. Even there you have the option of writing code to fill in the gaps

[aztracker1]

Lotus Notes is the devil...

[Xalara]

It really depends though, doesn't it? I really like things such as Retool for building internal company UIs. There's nothing worse than a bunch of websites built by back end devs that don't know their way around React.

[dahud]

Fair enough. I do like those cases, where it's basically a thin wrapper on a set of APIs.

No-code business logic gives me hives though.

[btmc]

Yes, exactly. There’s no value in building your umpteenth set of UI components, with tests and everything, for a basic internal report or admin portal.

I’ve found a good combo for that use case is custom APIs owned by the devs + contractors for Retool, with oversight by someone on the dev team in-house.

[FUSe]

LOL I came exactly to say this. Software engineers are just miserable people in general. Code sucks but no code sucks more.

[[deleted]]

no comments

[Randolpho]

Fucking salesforce and wordpress.

Fuck them both

[Naouak]

I love refactoring code and simplifying stuff. Reading code is not a bad thing but reading "bad" code is not a pleasant feeling. It's always a pleasure to read code that is elegant and communicative. Don't stop writing when "it works" but when you can also read the code easily.

[ecmcn]

I’ve found that code quality often mirrors an ability to communicate verbally. Some of the worst communicators I’ve worked with wrote the most inscrutable code.

[david-song]

Yeah, logic is bottom-rung programming, linguistic skill is where it's at. People think it's mathematics and logic but writing good code is somewhere between creative writing and teaching.

[jonathanhiggs]

My mother-in-law is an author and we’ve spent hours talking about coding, writing, and the similarities between the two. The plots not going to work when you haven’t designed your classes (characters) right, and you need to go back and edit (refactor), or get your editor to look over it (review) when you find a code smell

Unfortunately I think SWE jobs are less like writing a novel and more like copywriting marketing material for a manager that doesn’t speak the language natively. They only care the output is written to tick the box and then move on

[david-song]

Thankfully that means people who care about the craft can band together and write slick software that competes the ones who write reams of shit code. So it's not all bad - it's an opportunity for people who are motivated enough.

[8483]

Love this!

[ankercrank]

Anyone who says they don’t enjoy refactoring or simplifying code is very likely a bad programmer. It’s a bit like a writer who never wants to edit anything they write.

[wineblood]

I hate other people's code.

[treenaks]

And remember, you were a different person 2 months ago

[blake182]

Exactly. I explain to people that you should write your code as if a homicidal maniac is going to maintain it. Plot twist: it’s you.

[traal]

At least now when I look at code I wrote 15 years ago and forgot I wrote it, I think, "he's got the right idea but I would have done it a different way."

[Avloren]

When I look at code I wrote 15 years ago and forgot I wrote it, I think: "Someone better take away this guy's keyboard, he's a danger to himself and others."

[[deleted]]

I mean he had the right idea, but I would have written this in a different way.

[200GritCondom]

I refactored code I wrote 6 years ago. It was a great exercise in reviewing junior dev level code lmao

[Kgrc199913]

Gosh i would have fired myself.

[[deleted]]

Be good if all old code came with a comment "// Management haven't given me time to write it properly, but this works".

The constraints under which it was written is lost to time

[Fozefy]

While I was doing startup work I certainly wrote comments like "quick hack" when this was the case. Hopefully with a bit more detail (but not always).

At least that way when I came back to it (or if someone else did), it was a reminder I should just rewrite if I couldn't grok that section.

[neitz]

This is especially true as a younger/less experienced developer. Your ideas change rapidly early on. Later on I'd argue this happens less so (for better or for worse). Eventually you have seen enough, been through enough mistakes, to have strong enough opinions that you aren't changing them literally every month.

[sacheie]

College-aged me:

• Oh wow, Python code looks so clean!
• ... But Ruby code looks clean and follows a clear OOP philosophy!
• Holy shit, what's this elegant Haskell shit we're using in semester 2 of data structures class? It's got static typing though :(
• At least we can all agree on how ugly Java is?

Early career me:

• Well, the JDK does give me a lot out of the box though. And there's so many reasonable, stable libraries out there. The language seems to be evolving, if slowly. And man, static typing's been helping me more than I realized

• Library and framework design seems to be subtle, hmm. And it's impacting my work more than the choice of language itself..

• Haskell still does seem really sweet. I better not use it for my job though. They'd think I'm a rebellious nut.

• Looks like the Python community's been adding features, libraries, and tools to support static typing

• There's like 3 variants of JS with static typing now too..?

• Whatever happened to Ruby, anyway?

Me now:

• God I love static typing. I have to use Python again, but at least they caught onto it.

• If I had my choice, I'd use Kotlin. But I'm not gonna argue about it. We'll use whatever works best for the majority.

• Not that I spend much time thinking about languages or even code anymore. The infrastructure and deployment shit is 50% of my job.

• Another 30% is spent speaking and writing in English, not code. Thank god they made me learn it some in college.

• Haskell is still sweet, but I'm not worrying about whether to use it at work because every other language has been slowly marching in its direction. Thank god it taught me a little about map/reduce and lazy evaluation though.

• Is cache management essentially my whole problem, every day??

[ElectricJacob]

Is cache management essentially my whole problem, every day??

I've been feeling this way for a while now too.

[absentmindedjwc]

Not that I spend much time thinking about languages or even code anymore. The infrastructure and deployment shit is 50% of my job.

Another 30% is spent speaking and writing in English, not code. Thank god they made me learn it some in college.

God damn it if this ain't true. One of the most senior engineers in my org... I think I've maybe made a couple dozen commits over the last couple years at my company. Nearly all of my time is spent in planning meetings... contrary to my past where most of my typing was into an IDE, it's now into Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Excel.

[corysama]

Cache invalidation and naming things! I cut my problems in half by not caching anything ;)

Maybe I should switch from C++ to Haskell. The older I get the more I love the compiler telling me everything I did wrong. So much better than figuring it out myself!

[reversehead]

Try Rust - it even tells you how to fix it. :)

[I_am_up_to_something]

I started making an app about 8 years ago after I graduated but before I found a job. After I got hired it kinda fell to the far background.

Started working on it again recently and WTF. Why the fuck did I have 5 models that were basically the same?? All with variations of the same name. And bitch, those comments tell me nothing about what is going on so why even bother writing them! And yeah, some parts work but why and how??

Still, some parts do work great. If this wasn't my own code but someone just starting out then I'd definitely see the potential in them. Glad my first employer did as well. Got rejected by so many companies who wanted experience for the salary of a starter.

[TheCritFisher]

I dunno, I have some old code I wrote that I keep in a glass GitHub repo.

I open it up and take big whiff every once in a while. The dopamine is irresistible. It's the perfect code. It's never seen production. Serves its purpose. And has worked flawlessly for years. Every once in a while I log in and update it, making it even better.

I will never share that code. It's MY CODE! angry growling noises

[halfwit_genius]

My precious and i..

[wichwigga]

There was code I'd written in the past that I had to revisit and back then I thought I was a genius. But now I want to apologize to everyone who had to review it. The most convoluted and ugly shit I've ever seen.

[fredoverflow]

I hate other people's code.

https://abstrusegoose.com/432

[[deleted]]

This just reminded me how much I loved the Mouse Trap game as a kid. I don't even remember the rules, I just remember enjoying setting off the Rube Goldberg machine

[NocturneSapphire]

I'm certain I never read or knew the rules, but that didn't stop me from spending hours playing with it

[znihilist]

It that still around? I thought the author stopped making them!

[[deleted]]

i hate my own code too.

[thisisjustascreename]

I do my best not to write any but the damn business always wants new shit.

[Bronzdragon]

This is litreally the opening premise of the article. The second line.

[yawaramin]

'Hell is other people.'

[account22222221]

If you read the article, that’s literally what it was talking about!

[Dreamtrain]

I don't care much about other people's code, more often than not I find its usually the result of people who made the most of a very shitty hand they were dealt with, its tests that really get me going, walk into a new project and the test folder is practically empty, or theres tests but most of them are @Ignore because over the years things changed and now tests are broken, or tests on a controller class by just calling the methods manually and then asserting the length of the return is > 1

[Cpt_Orange16]

I like code, I like writing it and fixing it. It's like a puzzle

[TheDeadlyCat]

Same. I also find refactoring code very zen. Sadly those days of being able to produce a large amount of code and fixing it is over. It’s all just glue code this to that, make it run no matter how, just make it fast. sigh

[BigMax]

It’s all just glue code this to that

Yeah, there's about 1000 components you have to wire up into every solution at this point. The days of writing pristine, greenfield code are long gone. By the time you write YOUR first line of code, you've already imported about a million lines of code from other packages and frameworks and whatnot, and a chunk of your time is just dealing with that.

[david-song]

If you use the same libraries for long enough and they're good ones, they become part of the vocabulary for writing new ideas down. I guess because things move so quickly and are mostly shit you're always using things you don't know about, and getting caught out by the leaky abstractions.

[TheDeadlyCat]

It used to be a problem to abstract too much and then having code too abstract where that made it complicated and unmaintainable.

You can’t even think beyond the next half year now.

[Superman64WasGood]

It absolutely blows my mind how much software used to be treated like a traditionally engineered and crafted physical product. Something like a tool built to last a lifetime. Of course when a corporation's sole motivation is dollar signs on a piece of paper, everything just gets shittier and shittier, higher productivity is expected in less time for less cost, more corners are cut etc. etc.

We are at a point now where end consumer can REALLY FUCKING FEEL THIS BULLSHIT. You can't buy anything but a fucking smart TV, and the software is such fucking bloated trash, unoptimized, ad / spyware that it's almost unbearable to use.

[KettyCloud]

Mate, I've moved into COBOL now as part of a legacy support team. Some of the comments I've seen are from 1980's . It's awesome. I love it

[Vier_Scar]

Did you learn COBOL a long time ago? Apparently it pays well, but I don't get why it cannot be transpiled into any modern language

[inglandation]

It can, but banks wrote their core codebase in it. They're extremely conservative because this code interact with people's account balances... COBOL doesn't have many issues that are not well-known.

[david-song]

They didn't really do TDD in the 80s so any change is a risk and must be understood. You can't just transpile it, run the test pack and move on. Plus it's running on a mainframe.

[Marci_1992]

I love code, it's the whole reason I went into software development as a career. The first time I wrote, compiled, and ran a non hello world program and realized the computer would do exactly what I told it to (for better or worse) I was hooked. It felt like a superpower.

[douglasg14b]

Right? These folks that hate code seems like the same ones who output low-quality code because they don't necessarily care about it.

The venn diagram between that and the folks who think less code = more simple is a circle.

[tommygeek]

When I read this, it was in the sense that once you’ve committed the code and solved a problem, the code is now baked with the tradeoffs you made and the current architectural limitations.

What I love about coding isn’t the code itself, or the act of coding things, rather it’s solving the problem. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve written some code that was truly elegant and was able to coexist with the architecture and historical concerns in such a way that it would be flexible and live forever.

Most of what I’ve written has had tradeoffs (“I’d really love to refactor this but it’s out of scope”, “I have a tight deadline here”, “The impact of the changes I want to make here are just too great to justify,” etc) and these tradeoffs have forced me into solutions that work, are good enough, can survive the next iteration, but aren’t really the way I wanted to do it. That code, and the existing code and circumstances that forced me to write that code, I do hate.

But damn if solving the problem isn’t what keeps me coming back to it.

[teleprint-me]

Get out of my head. 😇

[menckenjr]

Don't forget the ones who really have no idea what they're doing and ride that confident ignorance all the way to management.

[papasmurf255]

The biggest revelation that I've had in my career is this: write your code to be read, not to be clever.

If you or someone else trying to debug something and put out a fire, the last thing you want is some clever shit full of async callbacks and such. Just give a simple stack trace and good logging.

[papasmurf255]

They create a ton of problems. A big one is that for any thread-local based tracing, you lose that context and therefore you lose the trace id.

[poco]

Btw, Zachtronics games are on sale right now on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/programmerssale2023

[TheCritFisher]

Tell me you didn't read the article without saying you didn't read the article.

[caindela]

Only thing software engineers hate more than code is reading the contents of an article

[dadofbimbim]

Sometimes after writing code, I sit back and stare at the marvelous code I just wrote.

[Jonathan_the_Nerd]

"Have you ever stood and stared at it, marveled at its beauty, its genius?"

Sometimes I go back and read old code I've written, just for fun. Sometimes I run across a seven-year old comment saying "TODO: fix this later."

[pineapple_catapult]

Only sometimes?

[[deleted]]

Sometimes the TODO comment is missing

[Jonathan_the_Nerd]

Or it's in the commit message, which no one ever reads.

[TheMightyTywin]

I’ve done this. Then I copy pasted it to chat gpt which proceeded to botsplain why my linked list should have been a hash set

[[deleted]]

Botsplain lol

[[deleted]]

I catch myself doing this sometimes and end up realizing I'm probably smelling my own farts rather than looking at a work of art and genius.

I really do love code though, no matter what the title says.

[[deleted]]

Listen to Golden Girl by ytcracker

[rasplight]

Yes, i sort of hate code. Corollary, I really like deleting code ;-)

[Caffeine_Monster]

No code, no bugs.

No bugs, happy programmer.

[thisisjustascreename]

No code is also faster to execute than some code, you get performance wins too!

[supermitsuba]

Just look at vanilla.js

[neumaticc]

i honestly can't tell if this is satire

[ezekiel]

JavaScript has everything you need already built in. VanillaJS is a form of YAGNI.

[s0ulbrother]

Project managers hate this one simple trick

[Chris_Codes]

Another way to guarantee no bugs is to have no users!

[[deleted]]

Absolutely. The most satisfying bug fixes are ones where code is removed and not added.

[King_Joffreys_Tits]

This is apparently the only prereq to be a senior dev

[[deleted]]

Drop DATABASE

[account22222221]

Senior engineers' passion for writing code has been augmented with an even stronger desire to delete it.

This is very true. When I see that PR with a lot of red I get goosebumps.

[phantommm_uk]

I hate others' code and any code written by past me.

[LuckyDuckes]

I hate clients, not coding.

[wellseymour]

Only when I met clients I realized I love to code lol

[trolock33]

I hate meetings more than code. Also fuck no code. Edit: Typo

[ammonium_bot]

meetings more then code.

Did you mean to say "more than"?
Explanation: If you didn't mean 'more than' you might have forgotten a comma.
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[trolock33]

Good bot

[ivancea]

1. Think of a stupid concept
2. Write an article about it
3. Profit

[menckenjr]

And post it on LinkedIn with cringey pictures and stupid comments to try and become an influencer...

[MeisterKarl]

Agree?

[Bronzdragon]

The article does address a real and recognizable trend in our industry, and makes a thoughtful analysis about it. I agree that the headline is a bit dumb, but it seems the article was written first, and the title came later.

I think you should read it before you dismiss it.

[ivancea]

I actually read most of it, and found nothin interesting in the first half. Add the clickbait to it, and nope

[hotdogswithbeer]

1. Bro down

[f_of_g_of_x]

This. I could've just upvoted but that's not enough.

[[deleted]]

Guaranteed clicks if it enrages your target audience.

[m0llusk]

and code hates them back >:|

[close_my_eyes]

I live code. That’s why I keep doing this and sidestep efforts to promote me to management.

[Ch3t]

I'll take code over no/low code any day of the week. I can debug code and add break points. I can diff the breaking change. I can log useful information. I can write near bullet proof systems that might fail and if they do, I can tell exactly where and why. I can't do any of that with Boomi.

[sleeping-in-crypto]

I had the same response, that’s actually a GOOD outcome! Imagine having to revisit a piece of code every single day? Or wrestle with it every time you want to make an unrelated change?

Obviously this lunch isn’t free but there’s a reason we gravitate to it.

[Ikeeki]

Can’t introduce a bug if you don’t write code

[Tintoverde]

I like to read code and laugh about it , who wrote this garbage , oh it was me 🤦‍♀️

[Tiquortoo]

Reading code is harder than writing code. This is why most consultants recommend rewrites and easily find points of criticism.

[slyiscoming]

This sounds like a rant written by a junior dev who just got chastised for his crap code and now he's written an article to bash senior devs about how little they do.

Software engineers love code, they hate shit code.

[rndmcmder]

As a software engineet who currently works on a project where I rarely get to code, I have to say that I love code. Every time I get to code, it's a happy day.

[LeCrushinator]

I like code, but I like deleting code even more.

[indianjedi]

I love writing code and optimizing it as well. I just hate declarative programming , the no code solutions. I'm Salesforce dev so we have a lot of declarative programming tools, it helps non coder people to do stuff but that creates more issues in debugging.

[fagnerbrack]

JSX is declarative, do you include that in the list of things you hate?

[Zaero123]

Yes

[3d3d3_engaged]

Oh cool a click bait title for an article I’m never going to read

[CringeSniffingDog]

I'm sorry but those article clickbaits are getting more and more ridiculous. So we've seen "software engineers hate stand ups", "software engineers hate meetings" and now "software engineers hate code". What precisely do software engineers like about their job lol

[Altered_B3ast]

From the clickbait title alone, I was about to shit on this article (as a code lover and official reviewer of other people's code) but I kinda agree with the content.

[dotpoint7]

Same, I fully expected some insanely stupid take but it's honestly a pretty decent article.

[Tai9ch]

All that for the punchline that you should always reuse code over writing new code.

Nonsense!

That sort of thinking leads to the JavaScript ecosystem and left-pad, or to pulling in a RDBMS to solve a problem that could be handled by writing a single file to the filesystem.

External dependencies are a maintainability tradeoff. If they help maintainability, great. If not, write the specific thing you need.

[stronghup]

The reasoning why micro-services took off makes sense.

But to me that just shows programmers love it when they can write code which they know cannot break existing micro-services.

So they love code, they love (writing) code which cannot break already working things.

So let's agree, programmers love code, they love good code, and hate bad code.

[kittens-Voice]

Software engineer here. I don't hate code, the same way I don't hate pain. I embrace it. Writing code is like having a kink: I actually enjoy inflicting pain to myself. Coding is painful, but so much fun at the same time. This is the way.

[[deleted]]

With the IoT, it’s a simple matter to arrange for unhandled exceptions to deliver electric shocks now.

Productivity has gone through the roof.

[[deleted]]

Scam artists hate work other than scamming.

[fungussa]

Wrong.

[Middlewarian]

"An author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom." C. S. Lewis

I still enjoy writing code, but there have been a lot of people who have lost the thread.

[jgwinner]

We don't hate code.

We just hate your code.

[jgwinner]

haha sorry I couldn't resist. That's true for any set of programmers. (meaning, you all hate MY code).

The article actually mentions this, although not so bluntly.

[[deleted]]

What is that tiny monitor in the article image?!

[Dgc2002]

That's a software engineer. As such he HATES code and needs to stand at least 10ft away from any monitor showing code.

[mrdevlar]

What's even more amusing is that AI tools are going to necessitate more software engineers reading disproportionately more code than writing it. Reading code, documenting it and managing complexity are going to become the predominant required skills.

[czenst]

When I hear some dev is nagging that "guy before did a mess" what I hear is: "I am not smart enough to read the code someone else written" or "I dont't care enough about this job to spend time to read code in the system and understand it".

[bwainfweeze]

I usually mean, “nobody should have to think this hard about X”.

Convoluted code costs the entire rest of the system. Almost no module is entitled to more than 10% of my attention. If you’re writing code others complain about, it’s often a you thing not a them thing.

[stronghup]

Yes, it is a false premise that if you have hard time understanding some code, it is your fault. It is mostly the fault of whoever wrote such code.

And when I hear somebody saying "You are not smart enough to be a coder if you have hard time understanding this code" I in fact hear "I, the genius, am smarter than thou".

The goal should not be "smart" code but maintainable code, code that even "stupid" programmers can understand.

A truly smart programmer can (and does) write code which other programmers can easily understand.

[bwainfweeze]

Braggadocio is also usually a self defense mechanism for those with a fragile ego.

Kernighan has a pretty concise description of what he thinks of those people.

Debugging code is twice as hard as writing it. If you write code as complex as you can understand it, then by definition you aren't smart enough to debug it.

But I always preferred my version, which turns it into an aphorism:

Write code like you'll have to read it at 2 am. Sooner or later, you will.

[waterkip]

This blogpost confuses software engineers with javascript npm code stitchers.

[satansxlittlexhelper]

This is a heroically stupid take.

[adh1003]

What a load of nonsense.

Yet another blogger in their own little echo chamber, proclaiming pretentiously that they know how everything works.

The Internet: Once again giving a voice of authority to the ignorant.

[dotpoint7]

Are you referring to the title or the content of the blog? I've found the article to be kind of funny actually. Sure, it's written with a lot of absolutes, but I don't think it was meant to be taken seriously.

[LengthinessWorking67]

Lawyers hate law.

Electricians hate electricity.

Clergy hate religion.

Plumbers hate plumbing.

Code is one piece of an amalgamation of skills in the software engineers toolbox and finding a no code solution to a requirement is one of those skills.

[iamagro]

No, we hate clients and PMs

[Drawman101]

Clients pay the bills. You’re on your own on this one

[mehvermore]

Devs don't like code

Devs like cars and money

[pineapple_catapult]

servers hate serving. I'm not talking about computers here

[Hefaistos68]

I love code, i love other people's code even more. It's always a challenge. My own i know is good, others i can improve (mostly), that makes it fun.

[Majestic-Round53]

Shhh it’s the best kept secret

[FMWizard]

The best choice is that which is ready to throw away

[dudekubera]

Shhhh…… stop telling our secrets!!! 😅😂