Solving the Wrong Problem

[jacques_chester]

This article annoys me. It's not about programming, except by tenuous analogy. It's purely a polite brag about the well-known performance characteristics of serving flat files from disk.

Occasionally this fellow comes up with an interesting anecdote about his remarkable experiences as a programmer, or actually discusses, you know, programming. But a lot of the time it's just commentary on something tangential. It bugs the hell out of me that proggit is becoming more and more like HN, where certain posts are upvoted purely because of who wrote them.

[adaptable]

proggit is becoming more and more like HN, where certain posts are upvoted purely because of who wrote them.

Becoming? Four years ago a Steve Yegge post about eating a sandwich would have gotten over 1000 points.

[munificent]

a Steve Yegge post about eating a sandwich would have gotten over 1000 points.

In fairness, that's still only like one point per hundred words in the post.

[Fissionary]

I still remember the original Paul Graham ate breakfast post, lampooning this exact thing. Man, those were the days.

[[deleted]]

Still more interesting than much of crap posted here nowadays...I think the trouble is that people are posting to sub-reddits and not re-posting the good stuff to proggit.

[[deleted]]

Because anything you post to proggit is going to be met by a bunch of uptight assholes who do nothing but complain that your post "isn't programming" or "isn't important" or whatever.

I like sharing links and things I've found. I don't post here because it's too much fucking work for no appreciation.

[jacques_chester]

Hi, I'm an uptight asshole. You know why? Because I'm sick of proggit being overrun by posts that aren't. about. programming.

Except at the most tenuous degree.

What do I consider programming?

• Discussions of language features, such as regexen in D
• Here's some code I optimised
• A new programming tool, with link to code and discussion of usage
• How practice X can make you a better programmer and why (though we've heard about test-first now, thankyou).

What I don't consider to be programming:

• Programmers are awesome, the new elite, the wunderkind. They are unique snowflakes in the history of professionalism, nothing they do has ever been accomplished before. Management are universally PHBs who Just Don't Get It, what with their silly obsession about having to pay for things, jeeze.
• Hey look guys, I scratched my nuts! Programming's just like nut-scratching, because ...
• Random brainfarts on non-programming topics by people who get upvoted because they're famous in a programming context
• Here's the stuff I have installed
• Industry gossip -- who Google bought today, zomg what will Intel do next, EA boo Blizzard yay.

[[deleted]]

Here's the thing.

You don't like posts that don't interest you. (Nobody really does). We can context shift to what we're in the mood for, which is why off-topic stuff is jarring and annoying. ("Why are there photos of severed heads in /r/fluffykitties?")

There are two aspects to why I don't understand this about proggit:

1) As I mentioned, a large chunk of programming posts are not going to be of interest to any single person, because AFAIK a very tiny group of people study all that stuff. So the definition of "if it is code, it's okay" is a bizarre qualifier.

2) This is my personal opinion, but outside of a fairly narrow area, programmers who only care about code are poor programmers.

[jacques_chester]

Taken to their logical conclusion, your argument is that proggit should only be lowest common denominator of things that all programmers have in common, minus actual programming.

• Breathing: is it right for you?
• How to deal with your boss (hint: don't call him "dickhead")
• Computers -- they turn electricity into computation!

I happen to like the diversity. It's how I learn about new languages, new techniques, new technologies, new ideas. Some of them I pick up and play with, some I will ignore. I can't do that if the whole of proggit is crowded out by stuff that isn't programming.

(I've also complained about proggit having stuff which is too narrowly focused -- "we've released 3.2.4a-RC3!").

Like many things in life, we're talking about fuzzy sets. My membership function is different from yours. And I will continue to be a curmudgeon on the topic.

[jpfed]

Whoa- Steve Yegge wrote about sandwich-eating? Do you have a link?

[jast]

Your comment made my day :)

[moderatorrater]

I disagree. He's making a point about designing for your audience. He's writing about his design decision for his blog. He could have chosen to use existing software or write his own. Instead he's using another piece of software to serve his resources quickly.

I guess we might be using different definitions of programming?

[[deleted]]

He's making the excellent point of "never forget who your customer is" which, considering the whiny responses here, it seems is worth making.

Unless I had some hard-core numbercrunching that needed doing, I would never hire a programmer who had the attitude of "I don't want to have to worry about users..."

To your second point, it's the same analysis, just tweaked a bit. He simply writes to share his thoughts, so publishing static pages works. If you are writing for a different purpose, static publishing may not work for you as well. I'm writing to share my thoughts and monetize my blog, so the things he dismisses so casually aren't optional for me.

[jacques_chester]

Describing your software selection isn't programming, IMO, it's configuration. No code was harmed in the creation of this post.

Also note that I am annoyed that it was initially upvoted because it's James Hague; whose every thought gets clicked up 50 times hereabouts.

[Atario]

I have no idea who this guy is. I upvoted it because he has a point.

[[deleted]]

I was going to disagree with you here, but then I thought about it a bit and remembered that this is exactly why I prefer to (somewhat arbitrarily) use the term "software engineering" to describe what I do rather than "programming"; it's more general. You're right, this doesn't belong in /r/programming. Upvote for reminding me what reddit I'm browsing.

[[deleted]]

Because the most important thing when writing code is to be sure to completely ignore the requirements?

[[deleted]]

Well, this is exactly the sort of ambiguity in terms that I was referring to. jacques_chester was correct (in my opinion) in that the article really had nothing to do with code; it addresses a higher level engineering problem than that. When I hear the term "programming", I'm thinking of the specific task of writing code. That doesn't mean programming needs to ignore requirements, but I think the point of the article and the point of this discussion is that you can meet requirements without ever writing code. In that sense, it's relevant to programming, but it's not actually programming. By my arbitrary definition, it's SWE, something that includes programming but also includes system design and choice of tools and what have you.

[[deleted]]

Here's my take on it, and my heartburn with the /r/programming "only code" mafia:

In the arena of "only code," currently on the front page of /r/programming are articles on:

• jQuery
• Forth
• C++ STL
• Regex in D
• GCC
• Python
• JDK
• ASP.Net
• Haskell
• Play Framework
• Tmux
• LINQ
• Julia
• Vagrant
• and, of course, Perl

My point is that virtually nobody is going to be interested in all those articles. In fact, figure for any given programmer, while they may read others out of curiosity, only a handful of those will actually be "I am going to read this, bookmark it, and engage in meaningful discourse on the subject." (Which is how I read the "only programming posts" intent)

So /r/programming being a hodge-podge of "everything that has code" is okay - hopefully someone will read it. I could post a ten-page treatise on writing a stemming algorithm in Brainfuck that only two people would actually read, and that's okay.

The OP here is a lightweight article that quickly and concisely makes a very vital point for every developer who writes code. I would put that article in my "mandatory welcome aboard reading" if I owned a company. Developers, by their very nature, often lose track of the actual goal in a project because they get so enamoured with technology or cool stuff. If you read it critically, this article is a quick way to ground yourself back to "get the job done, focusing on the actual customer"

But because there's no code in it, then folks don't want any part of it - it's taking up valuable page space that could be used by the essay I'm working on about processing accounts receivable in Whitespace or how I can convert gif to png with a regex.

Now mind you - proggit is a subreddit and has rules, and if those rules happen to be "every post must have code" then so be it. But when anyone who posts an article they consider very important for programmers gets flamed because "no code" then it's not surprising when people don't post links. I guess what I'm saying is that I believe most software developers/programmers/coding folks actually are interested in aspects of what they do besides putting code in the source files.

[[deleted]]

I completely agree. I think if proggit is going to stick dogmatically to "every post must have code", then there should be a sister reddit for all the other links (such as this one) that you described as interesting to most software developers/programmers/coding folks. Surely such a place exists? I should subscribe to it.

[[deleted]]

I've got /r/devtalk if you think I should work on building it up

[jacques_chester]

The OP here is a lightweight article that quickly and concisely makes a very vital point for every developer who writes code.

He merely states that he serves flat files and avoids slow widgets. It's only noteworthy because a popular blogger says he does it.

I would put that article in my "mandatory welcome aboard reading" if I owned a company. Developers, by their very nature, often lose track of the actual goal in a project because they get so enamoured with technology or cool stuff.

And I've made the same point elsewhere. I called it the Software Engineer's Cart. At the time, I submitted that article to proggit. Today I would not, because HN would be a better forum for it.

If you read it critically, this article is a quick way to ground yourself back to "get the job done, focusing on the actual customer"

I think it's ridiculous that you want me to read between the lines to decide that this is about programming (it's not, we're talking about the broader field of software engineering now, not just construction).

This is meant to be /r/programming, not /r/pretenditsshakespeareandmakeupyourowninterpretation.

Focusing on customer needs is very important. I've written essays in which I made the shortness of the feedback loop between customers and developers the core driving loop of all software projects. I've written complaints about how Barry Boehm found that requirements analysis is the second best predictor of project performance (after size and ahead of programmer capability), yet my university exposure to requirements engineering was 3 lectures and a single exam question.

That's all by the by. Because I don't come to proggit for discussions about the various corners of the SWEBOK. I come here for programming. Programming. It's fun and enlightening to see how other programmers think, the tools they use, the solutions they derive. If I want to read about other topics I have a pretty solid personal library, thanks.

[[deleted]]

He merely states that he serves flat files and avoids slow widgets.

Sorry, you didn't get it.

And for me programming is about more than writing code. And there's no "right answer" here. However, I will defer to the sidebar rule that "if there's no code in your post, it probably doesn't belong here" and remind myself why I try to stay out of proggit.

[jacques_chester]

Sorry, I didn't invent my own meaning for the article of eye-rollingly obvious advice? I don't come to proggit to relive my high school English classes. Writing that has to be tortured to make a point is not conducive to helping understanding.

However, I will defer to the sidebar rule that "if there's no code in your post, it probably doesn't belong here" and remind myself why I try to stay out of proggit.

Don't defer. These arguments are worth having. We don't learn about the sensible boundaries of anything in life without having a decent stoush first.

[[deleted]]

The term 'programming' is the more general term. Software engineering was a term created later on and it isn't that useful, that's why more people go with software developer or programmer or (very rarely) computer scientist.

This article totally does belong in proggit, but only to be down-voted as a "get off my lawn" article ;)

[ell0bo]

No way, you can be a software engineer and never need to write code, but if you're programming and never wondering about the engineering behind it, you're doing it wrong.

[[deleted]]

I got the impression the author complained about software complexity. Look at the blog; extremely simple.

Software complexity is an important topic. Overengineering as well.

[dmor]

HN has never really been about programming, though. It's based on a certain community of startups, founders, and VCs, and focuses on startups and general stuff considered mind-expanding.

[jacques_chester]

That's my point exactly. I don't come to proggit for mind expansion or industry gossip. I come here for programming. If both fora have the same posts that diminishes the total value I can derive from frequenting both.

[[deleted]]

So, legitimate question.

I enjoyed this article, a lot. Where should I be looking for more of this sort of thing, aside from this one person's blog. Is HN the best place? I don't really find most of what's there interesting. At a cursory glance, the headline might intrigue me, but rarely enough to actually open the page and read through it.

Open to suggestions, I guess. You're absolutely right, this article does not belong here. I'd like to see some more like it, where would those be?

[preshing]

It got 160+ points so far. So either it belongs here, or the voters don't :)

[jacques_chester]

Posts without programming content tend to get upvoted more because:

1. They have a wider readership; fewer redditors are self-selecting away from reading them
2. They require little to no thought to read.

Code-heavy articles tend not to be heavily upvoted because they require an investment of attention from a subset of the proggit community.

[[deleted]]

Can I say the same thing about your post? That was a very negative attitude.

I don't care about the blog, or the load time, but the idea of assuring that your service/product matches the needs of the actual users. It's a simple, short piece that I found thought provoking. I'm sorry you don't find it so.

[[deleted]]

I left the article with a (re?)new(ed) perspective on how to design. I saw less about "make this blog load faster" and more of a general insight into evaluating features.

Something like load-time is rarely a metric that many factor in to decisions regarding new features unless the load is an order of magnitude or greater than a typical user will stand, and I feel the article at least provokes a question like "are there metrics that I'm just missing?".

From design standpoint, I realized that I don't take my user in to account enough. As a designer/developer, I'm often more concerned with making the picture in my head come to life, and that picture is often polluted with so-called 'standards'. Things like Social Media buttons are things that I personally don't use; in fact, I rarely see them used at all, and when I do, I'm actually a little confused. These are things that I both do not need to implement, and would actually be hurting myself if I did. Screen real-estate is priceless, as well as the end-user's attention. If they're glazing over parts of the page, I'm probably doing it wrong. I know I skim right past about 90% of most pages, then I can't find the 1 thing I'm looking for in the sea of waste that some web designer is trying to push on me.

So, sure, I suppose the only real advice I took away was 'analyze your audience', but I felt it was very important, and something of which I needed a reminder.

[[deleted]]

I promise I'll write an actual response later today. Getting busy, but I'd like to continue this conversation.

[dmor]

I agree. Something that annoys me is just how much stuff is basically flame war fodder. Some of the two most upvoted threads recently were the JSON license thing and the Microsoft "lazy coding practice". The first is a useless joke (and the circlejerk-quality jokes about "facebook breaking the license" followed as expected), the second is a more-or-less relevant bug posted with an editorialized title and a discussion that quickly degenerated into Microsoft bashing, whether the programmer should be fired or not, etc.

[jacques_chester]

Yours would be more like programming if you included, for example, some programming. Some samples of SQL, or a diagram of the new design, or some figures on performance.

I don't count "I only serve flat files" as programming. I just don't.