Beautiful Code Interview

An anonymous reader writes "Safari Books Online has just posted an interview with Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, the two editors who put together the recent O'Reilly book, Beautiful Code. "Beautiful Code" features 33 different case studies about challenging coding scenarios from some of today's most high-profile developers and OS project leaders. There's also a new Beautiful Code web site based on the book where many of the authors are blogging about their work and coding practices."

Comments

Nothing to see here

[AuMatar]

Yeah, thats about the amount of beautiful code I expect to see in my life time.

Re:Nothing to see here

[morgan_greywolf]

"If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." -- forgot who said it.

Re:Nothing to see here

[larry bagina]

If it's any consolation, you did get the coveted first typo.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If we built our cars like we build our software, they would look great, they would have controls even a five-year-old could use, and every 65,536 miles they'd teleport you back to where you started.

This just reminds me of my friend.

[Anonymous Coward]

His introduction to C++ teacher told him throughout the class that his code was not "pretty" because he wasn't properly commenting. The code always worked flawlessly, but still she marked "-1 code not pretty"
On the final project he spent a good portion of time properly commenting all of his code and ended with a commented ascii flower and the following:

//Look at my flower,
//my pretty pretty flower.
//Now my code is pretty

He was marked off "-1 Sarcasm not appreciated"

Re:This just reminds me of my friend.

[morgan_greywolf]

And to think if he posted it on Slashdot, he might've actually gotten a +5 Funny! ;)

Re:This just reminds me of my friend.

[mrchaotica]

He should have removed one syllable from the last line; then he would have gotten "+1 haiku!"

The problem with the book...

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Anyone else have laugh when they looked at the cover of the book?

A Flock of Birds?

To symbolize beautiful code?

Flock-of-Birds-style code is the UGLIEST code out there!

Used only by those who haven't learned to use case statements, build databases, or define arrays.

Is this beautiful code???

if(something==interesting)
    if(somethingelse==goodcode)
        if(somethingother==blahblahblah)
            if(somestupidbookcover=birds)
                doSomethingUseful();
            else
        else
    else
else
    if(somethingelse==goodcode)
        if(somethingother==blahblahblah)
            if(somestupidbookcover=birds)
                doSomethingUseful();
            else
        else
    else
end if

Re:The problem with the book...

[morgan_greywolf]

There's a name for that garbage? Well, color me stupid. Learn something new every day.

Re:Have to say...

[Anonymous Crowhead]

I have yet to see a really good example other than my own.

I, too, am the only one I know who writes decent code.

beautiful code

[lottameez]

while (1){
Beer b = (Beer)getBeer();
drinkBeer(b);
belch(BelchType.LOUDLY);
}

Re:beautiful code

[RetroGeek]

You forgot to add inside the loop:

Bladder blad = Bladder.getInstance();
if ( blad.isHurting() )
{
  bld.empty();
}

Re:beautiful code

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us pray getBeer() does not return a Singleton.

Beware the raptors ...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/292/

That is all.

Re:The OpenBSD code is studly.

[garett_spencley]

Hey Theo ... haven't chatted with you in a while. How's it going ? Family doing well ?

Re:Dangers of binge drinking

[Ungrounded Lightning]

There is a memory leak in your code. Or maybe it's a feature?

Nope. drinkBeer(b) frees the beer instance.

(But there may be a memory leak in the PROGRAMMER after enough iterations.)

Re:The OpenBSD code is studly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed, thanks for the report!

Re:Dangers of binge drinking

[julesh]

There is a memory leak in your code. Or maybe it's a feature?

getBeer() may be using the flyweight pattern, and reusing previous beer instances (presumably after their .urinate() method has been called to, err..., release them). This is clearly why the otherwise pointless typecast to (Beer) is present: the method probably returns Lager, and the writer wanted it to be clear that it was more generic than that.

Re:The most beautiful code I've ever seen...

[Alaria Phrozen]

No, that makes it retarded.