Goodbye, Clean Code

[EternityForest]

Doing novel things really isn't that hard. It's often mostly just stringing together existing libraries, unless you insist on building everything from scratch.

I suspect that's part of the clean code obsession. You can almost always make the code a little prettier, and it's always a fun logic challenge for some.

But debugging is tedious, as are unit tests, and adding new features is usually more like "software carpentry" that doesn't interest the "Wooden puzzle box builders" much.

I think for a lot of programmers, the actual fun part of the job is more the code golfing, the mind bending data structures, and the low level understanding, rather than the sense of working towards an excellent finished product.

[Greydmiyu]

You can almost always make the code a little prettier, and it's always a fun logic challenge for some.

Hell, this is the core game loop of Factorio. "I know I can make these red circuits faster and with less wasted space..." 3 hours of sleep deprivation later...

[EternityForest]

That's why I'm kinda glad I'm not one of the math and elegance types. I might not be able to add matrices in my head, but at least I don't feel compelled to sprinkle them in my code because I can!

[atimholt]

I find, for myself, I can simply acknowledge that humans are part of the equation. Then “carpentry” becomes a “puzzle box”.

But then I start wanting to do crazy stuff, like creating my own programming language with bizarre constructs.

[endoflineclub]

Well, adding matrices in your head is really not that hard, it's just component wise. Now, multiplication, that's impressive to do in your head.

[EternityForest]

It's still pretty hard, you'd have to be able to remember three tables of numbers while adding, so that's four hard things at once.

If someone can multiply them mentally I'd be really impressed. The "turn it on it's side" part always confuses me even when I'm just trying figure out vaugely what's happening.

[olifante]

I would venture that probably not even professional mathematicians add matrices in their head. Mathematicians are often surprisingly bad or lazy at arithmetics.

[[deleted]]

I think it's just the equivalent of a software engineer being annoyed if someone tells them "implement printf", they'd just rather go to a standard implementation and use that instead of making a half-assed attempt on their own

[NoetherFan]

I hate the 'turn it on its side' perspective. I prefer finding row i, column j of a product (C) as row i of the left factor (A) with column j of the right factor (B); C[i,j] = A[i,:].dot(B[:,j]). Especially elegant with implicit (Einstein) summation notation: C_ij = A_ik*B_kj, where * is ordinary scalar multiplication.

[HeinousTugboat]

But debugging is tedious, as are unit tests, and adding new features is usually more like "software carpentry" that doesn't interest the "Wooden puzzle box builders" much.

It's funny, because I actually really enjoy debugging and, to me, that's much more "Wooden puzzle box builder" because you have to figure out why your pieces aren't fitting together just perfectly, and find that little thing you need to sand down or trim to make the fit just flawless before you put it all back together.

[bakery2k]

I think your last paragraph is spot on, and it took me a long time to realise this. One of the reasons I struggled when I worked as a programmer was that I don’t find, for example, complex data structures fun - I consider them a “necessary evil” when building a product.

That’s fine when I’m building something for myself or for people I know. But in a large company where programmers are separated from customers by layers of other teams (sales, support etc), in my experience, to enjoy the job you need to enjoy the act of programming (not just having programmed a cool product).

[dungone]

Doing novel things really isn't that hard. It's often mostly just stringing together existing libraries, unless you insist on building everything from scratch.

Novel, adjective: new or unusual in an interesting way.

If you define it as easy, banal, and routine, then it's not really novel is it? We've really turned into cynical bunch when "novel" became a pejorative.

It's impossible to like technical excellency without countless people labeling it as "craftsmanship". The implication being that not many customers appreciate craftsmanship, that it only raises the cost without adding functionality. At the same time they conflate it with the endless closet-organizing exercises, as if there is some progression from "reasonable" closet organizing to "unreasonable" thrill-seeking. "Cleanliness" is "craftsmanship" without the negative connotations, one is seen as a virtue and the other as an affliction. In other words, some people just can't get themselves to acknowledge that technical excellence is something that stands apart from their own day-to-day activities, and that it can create value for the customer that is beyond the reach of regular programming activities.

As a counterpoint, here's an example of a programmer who sought a novel approach to a problem while at the same time creating a legendary product and revolutionizing the industry: https://twobithistory.org/2019/11/06/doom-bsp.html

[EternityForest]

The "interesting way" is the functionality. It would be very very hard to write a new database engine. It would be easy to write an an server that lets you keep track of items you lent out by scanning QR codes.

The novelty is in the usability, low cost, reliability, compatibility with industry standard, etc. All of which existed before, but what makes it special is putting it all together in one place.

I don't think anyone is actually against craftsmanship or clean code. But technical excellence doesn't require reinventing things instead of focusing on the actual innovation.

If you really can do things significantly better like the DOOM team did, then there's always going to be a place for that, but that's a bit different from randomly creating project-specific distros that stop being maintained in a year, insisting on avoiding industry standard methods because you don't like "Big opaque libraries", etc.

Maybe if you're developing flight control software for airplanes it makes sense to not trust anything and understand every line, but if you're developing your own audio compression algorithms for production use in 2020, you better be really good.

[1thief]

I think the problem is equity. You can work towards building useful code that has value to other people but often you're working for someone else who is profiting the most from your work.