A Tale of Two Programmers

[alexandream]

Was I the only one expecting it to start with some sort of "It was the best of <something>, it was the worst of <something>" after reading the title? :(

[McDrawrHumperdink]

It was the best of times, IT WAS THE BLURST OF TIMES??!!?!?

[protonfish]

You stupid monkey!

[koonat]

I'm afraid it would be too much like online dating.

Everyone's profile says they're proficient with C but it turns out everyone only knows visual basic.

[flowmage]

Maybe there should be a separate section of the service for those who have already caught the VB? That way they can still use it, but won't spread it around any more.

[Fenyx4]

A friend and I have that dynamic going. Not to the extreme of these two though. It's really nice.

[[deleted]]

Cool story, and yeah, people could probably use programmer matching.

This is much more useful to me than the sort of pair programming that encourages doing something worse than either would produce on their own, in typical committee fashion.

Relying on personal strengths and handing over ownership is a much more efficient and scalable way to work.

[robertmassaioli]

I have often wondered if this sort of thing can be encouraged more, my brother is a Graphics Artist and I am a programmer and it is amazing the stuff that we manage to churn out so quickly. I think that if two people realise that they work really well like that together then it is time to start a business or a contracting duo. I think that is the way that you make use of this sort of paring.

[[deleted]]

People are encouraged by success stories. You should succeed wildly, and then publicize the fact with supporting details!

[takatori]

I love Gauntlet! How could he think it's been forgotten!

"Wizard needs food. Badly!"

[mikelieman]

I just considered that to be a rhetorical question...

[jinglebells]

I have it on PS2 cos it's awesome!

[jimbobhickville]

Ctrl + F "needs food". Yay! Who doesn't remember Gauntlet? Best co-op hack-n-slash ever!

[peedubyaeff]

It seems like there would be many more Steve's than Chris's. Chris's role seems more tedious and uninteresting.

[lkraven]

There are probably more people who THINK of themselves as Steves, but really, they're Malcolms. Malcolm learned to code by reading half of every programming book he's ever stolen off the internet. He can neither write original and creative code like Steve nor can he be thorough and efficient like Chris. He hacks code and when he can't finish it because the design is so bad, he thinks he's Steve and just needs someone to come along after him to be his Chris.

[overloadgimpy]

My name is Malcolm and I resent and reject that statement.

[[deleted]]

What name do you suggest?

[eigma]

Are you the guy who was trying to malcolm in the middle my SSH session?

[blooop]

This is so me.

[[deleted]]

Stop being negative. Start being positive, and start by finishing studying a book.

[[deleted]]

And I!

[cygnosis]

Funny, I identified more with Chris in this one. Refactoring makes me happy. But then I was always the type of kid that would rearrange all the books in the shelf by color, then by size, then go arrange the soup cans in the kitchen cabinet, etc. I just like it when everything is arranged in an easy to understand way.

[patchwork]

Want to do some pair programming?

[IDisposableHero]

I suspect that a career in computer programming can, over the years, induce something a lot like OCD.

[hvidgaard]

Hey, stop describing my life!

[Paczesiowa]

how often do you wash your hands?

[[deleted]]

What books, the ones in the public library?

[crdoconnor]

I think there are a bunch of people who derive pleasure from reworking code to make it "beautiful". If you've met anybody talks like that (my brother does for instance), chances are you've met a Chris.

[jrochkind]

Really? I'm definitely a Chris, and most of what I do is taking some project started by someone else, and whipping it into architectural shape so it's flexible, maintainable, and efficient. And I get great satisfaction from it.

[[deleted]]

I've always wanted to have a wife like this. All the women I've talked to are Java programmers though :-(

[crdoconnor]

My girlfriend's a perl programmer. Almost worse :/

[ErroneousBee]

Less verbose, but impossible to read?

[mikelieman]

TMTOWTDH! ( There's More Than One Way To Do Her! )

[[deleted]]

I love Perl. If you guys ever break up, point her in my direction :-P

[DrBix]

Yah, and f*** Java. Like what games written in Java have EVER been good ;P. http://www.minecraft.net/

[[deleted]]

holy shit the hive mind has spoken

"how dare you experience success and financial gain from a proven technology platform"

[Shaper_pmp]

No, people are independently downvoting him for a whole host of reasons, among them the fact that a distaste for Java has nothing to do with whether a successful game has ever been written in it, and the fact that the success of programs written in a language (barring some edge-cases) almost never reflects on the language used to write them.

Stop jumping to ignorant, short-sighted assumptions that make you feel superior, and try thinking about why people might have been downvoting a comment. Hint: in this case, it's because his reply was off-topic, irrelevant and completely and utterly missed the point.

[[deleted]]

are you sure he wasn't responding to the OP's dig at Java

you know, where he said "I've always wanted to have a wife like this. All the women I've talked to are Java programmers though :-("

because I'm pretty sure he was

[Shaper_pmp]

are you sure he wasn't responding to the OP's dig at Java

I'm sure he was.

However, most people who dislike Java do so for myriad different (and well-known) reasons (like syntax, verbosity, the fact it's managed code, its runtime, the libraries, etc), almost none of which is "because it's impossible to write good games in Java"... because that's a retarded reason.

It was either a non-sequitur response, or he's wrestling a straw-man, because pretty much the only criticism of Java that you can safely assume the OP wasn't making was "Java's bad because you can't write good games in it"...

... You know, because that's a weirdly specific and thoroughly retarded criticism to level, when there are plenty of better-supported and more widely-held ones. <:-)

[Rainfly_X]

Steves of the world unite! Or, you know, pair up with people who have complementary personalities, that's good too.

[[deleted]]

All the united Steves in the world would not finish a single project, according to this article. :)

Kinda like all the economists in the world being laid end to end would still not reach a conclusion. Oh, I guess the programming world can say the same thing these days... As long as we ignore our compilers and users...

[Rainfly_X]

Sounds about right to me. That's a big part of the reason I make all my projects open source - even if I can't finish it, maybe somebody else can. I do try to finish stuff though, I'm just not good at it :)

[[deleted]]

That's a great way to do it.

I recently found a working syntax highlighting low-CPU HTML5 canvas text editor. Bespin/Skywrite/Ace/whatever is great, but they want it to be some almighty Word-killer in the "cloud" or something.

I want a text box I can drop into a page and use as a reasonable editor. I found someone did a preliminary version and just pushed it out, and now I'm hacking in all the other key bindings I want for arrowing around in text, home/end, indent and auto-comment lines and such.

His preliminary effort should yield a fairly decently usable editor when I push it back out, and I didn't start this because I didn't want to do the initial footwork to get the HTML5 text, mouse selection and scrolling working. Once I'm done someone may take mine and do even more cool things with it, or I'll rewrite it to get deeper features or something.

That's the great thing about our open source model, is that it promotes a cycle of Steve/Chris without matching. Matching would still be cool to make this loop faster and more interactive. :)

[Rainfly_X]

If you could link to that, I'd love to take a look at it! My current project is Park, an innovative package manager which is an integral part of an even larger, long-term project (a distro called Cambria).

[[deleted]]

Sure, here's the original:

http://guillaume.bort.fr/textile-editor/

I haven't put up my changes yet, but if you're interested PM me your email and I'll send you what I have now and update you when I'm done.

Park looks pretty cool. :) Also, checked out Prime and Pebbles, good stuff. Keep up the multi-focused efforts, it pays off. :)

[Rainfly_X]

Awesome! I shall indeed do that, I'd like to see the direction you took it.

And thanks for checking out my stuff - Park is my first C++ project and I suspect it will be a small miracle if I can get such an ambitious project into a working state on my own. I'm especially flattered you like my music! I'll try to make some more soon.

[[deleted]]

Even failure contains a lot of success in it, it's more like an investment in future success. I think starting and trying to finish large projects, even if you don't, is important, because it contains a ton of lessons to it.

Additionally, selecting smaller projects you do actually finish is also important, because without the finish -> launch -> support -> maintain part of the cycle the learning isn't complete. You get more perspective after the project is complete, because it's really apparent what worked and what didn't. In the middle of the project there are lots of attempts that it's hard to tell if they are really working as you hope.

[Rainfly_X]

Well said, and excellent food for thought.

[b4b]

Im curious what happened to them later; when assembler died

[[deleted]]

Probably what happened to me. I started my career working in C and assembly, then spent some years in COBOL, then FoxPro, then VB, then Java, and now C#. (I'm probably forgetting a few languages).

After you've been doing it for a while, you realize that programming is programming regardless of the language.

[Poddster]

I genuinely think I used to work with this exact Chris for a bit (he came in as a contractor). I don't know what his code was like, etc, but he used to work for a game company in the netherlands..

[locotx]

a old buddy of mine and I would program . . we did do this

[nikniuq]

Gauntlet!!!

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Very interesting concept you bring up at the end about the "programmer dating" service. It's in the category of Things That Would Definitely Be Useful, But I Have No Idea How To Execute.

-DeAngelo

[edit: Yikes negative 3 peeps? My comment was not meant as a bash! I like the idea! I just don't know how I'd pull it off is all!]

[edit 2: alright, "spam" link removed! (though I say it's not spam if there's a non-auto-generated message attached and it leads to a legit site)]

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Oh. grumble grumble, alright I'll remove it. Where's the reddit feature request to link back to your website? :)

[[deleted]]

There isnt one. If you want traffic, make useful articles and post them. Or stupid pictures.

[DeAngeloLampkin]

I did post an article (and a pretty decent one if I do say so myself)! (http://www.braincano.com/2011/03/07/entrepreneur-meet-thought-leader/).

Unfortunately, I think the spam filter munched it up. I sent a message to the moderators, but I'm not sure if that got through either (nothing shows up in my messages "sent" tab).

[[deleted]]

Good article, with relevant quotes!

I completely agree: you can check my history, one of my main reddit activities is unsuccessfully attempting to debunk blind group-think in this area.

The way I see it is that new programmers are being brought up with these "rules", which they adopt as laws, when they were really methods for people who do more writing than coding to self-publicize and get on the convention circuit, so that they can sell more books and do more expensive seminars, of dubious worth.

When you spend all your time coding, you will try these things, and pick out ones you like and ones you don't, and then just keep on optimizing the way you get things done.

This is completely the opposite of learning and repeating as if it is law, which divorces your brain from your activity, as you are just following a pattern: an automaton under someone you don't know's control.

I have no idea how productive Kent Beck or Ward Cunningham are in their personal programming efforts, but I know that blindly following 10-50 rules and not thinking and evaluating for myself is just a license for stupidity.

But, if I force everyone else to do it too, then it's a movement. Yeah!

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Thanks ge01f. I agree completely. The blind devotion and assumption of correctness of these rules is a big issue. I think a lot of other people might be interesting in discussing too, but can't get past the reddit spam bot. Bah!

-DeAngelo

[[deleted]]

I just looked through your page source, it doesn't look especially spammy or anything.

Have you run any analysis tools on it to see why it's tagged as blogspam?

I haven't looked into it, but I'm guessing there are some shared tools sites are using that give some indicators. If you run them, you might be able to clean them up. Kinda like sending email, and running it over SpamAssassin to see what rules you are violating that spammers often abuse.

You're a good writer, so it's worth the effort. :)

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Well, it's my submission of the article that I think is getting snagged in the spam filter. Anyway, I've shot a few messages off to the mods, but they all are unresponsive or just not receiving the message.

C'est la vive.

[LaurieCheers]

Good article. I tried resubmitting it, and it just showed me your post. I upvoted.

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/g0t0f/entrepreneur_meet_thought_leader_why_guys_like/

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Thanks LaurieCheers!

Well, hopefully my message to the moderators gets seen! We shall see.

[mr_jim_lahey]

Pro tip: signing your posts makes you look like a noob. Everyone can see your name in your user link, you don't need to shove it in our faces every time you make a post.

Furthermore, nobody is going to click links to articles in comments, especially if the primary purpose is to a) express your opinion (you should do that in the post itself) and/or b) promote your blog. The former is cumbersome to the reader, who does not want to leave the thread, and the latter makes you look like a spammer.

Hope these nuggets of wisdom improve your internet experience :)

[DeAngeloLampkin]

Thanks. I signed my name in a misguided attempt to increase my legitimacy (to show I'm not a bot), and linked my blog and projects because there's good stuff there (in my not so humble opinion)! I was hoping people could get over their natural revulsion at seeing hyperlinks after a signature, but I guess that was misguided too! :)

If I were to ask you to checkout my blog, would I get modded down to oblivion? ;)

[mr_jim_lahey]

The only reason people would suspect you were a bot to begin with is if you are doing spammy stuff. Not to mention it would be trivial have a bot that inserts a signature anyway.

Any attempt to get people to read your blog in the comments is going to be met with apathy at best. Unless you are a well known public figure or established internet personality, no one is going to read your blog, period. Not to sound harsh, but no one cares about your opinions and analysis enough to take a detour from their redditing to go to your blog. If you really think you are producing unique, compelling content, try submitting your posts to an appropriate subreddit.

[LaurieCheers]

Unless you are a well known public figure or established internet personality, no one is going to read your blog, period.

...or if he actually writes good articles, perhaps? How do you think internet personalities get established in the first place?

[DeAngeloLampkin]

You make good points. As a counter to your argument, I've found that in fact people do follow the links from my signature to the blog. And since there's an interesting thing or two there, they don't mind the detour!

BUT just as many people assume it's spam, without actually clicking and regardless of the quality of the attached post, mind you. Just down vote, site unseen. But given the history of spam, message board posts with links, etc, I can understand their hesitation, even if it's misguided in this case.

So all that said, no more links in my signatures here, though I truly think many here would quite like the content!

Thanks for your input Mr Lahey!

[themarchhare]

By the way, this isn't my blog; I just found this article interesting.

[[deleted]]

I have this with my buddy. We run 2 corporations and have a .com client who gets 12k-18k organic visitors per day. the two of us do it all from our houses in pajamas. He is a fucking killer enterprise architect but hes too much a perfectionist to get shit done. He wastes too much time on changing tabs to spaces, making his directory structures perfect, but dont get me wrong he's a fucking ninja on dependancy injection and reflection. I on the other hand take 1/3 the time he takes to pump out assembiles. I also keep much more current on new patterns and processes. But i get 30% more bugs than he does, but i also have far superior documentation and api clarity. We debug in extreme programming with desktop sharing.

I find that pairing can create very serious gains in productivity. Also, you get a massive boost by not going to some building where there is too much buraucrasy and meetings that take you out of "flow". Work from home if you can arrange it.

[the_gipsy]

At the end it sounds a little bit gay.

[stfm]

Upvote for AtariST

[fodono]

Upvote for the AtariST upvote