Whatever Happened To Programming?

Mirk writes "In a recent interview, Don Knuth wrote: 'The way a lot of programming goes today isn't any fun because it's just plugging in magic incantations — combine somebody else's software and start it up.' The Reinvigorated Programmer laments how much of our 'programming' time is spent pasting not-quite-compatible libraries together and patching around the edges." This 3-day-old article has sparked lively discussions at Reddit and at Hacker News, and the author has responded with a followup and summation.

Comments

As a writer of crappy code..

[RulerOf]

Crappy code is all around.

Crappy code exists because it works. It matters not how elegant a solution is; it matters that such is, in fact, a solution.

Disclaimer: I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer.

Re:As a writer of crappy code..

[MrBigInThePants]

Actually this is very close to one of my personal beliefs on it.

Code that already exists and works has a very strong argument. In fact it is a very hard one to argue against when your code does not exist and is not currently working.

My main point here is that I have seen WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY too many arrogant programmers talking from their bum about how much better THEIR code would be if only THEY had a chance to rewrite it.
Of course they would not be paying for the rewrite, have no analysed the cost/benefit of it or in fact proved that they are up to the task. And all too many are not - they are simply underestimating the effort and complexity in their little personal fantasy.

Re:As a writer of crappy code..

[MrBigInThePants]

Or perhaps it would be just a different kind of crap?

Or perhaps the crap would creep in once they realize that they failed to reproduce many of the artifacts (aka bus. req. ) that the old code had.

Or perhaps they really are not that great and it is VERY easy to poke sticks at other people's work when you don't have to ante up yourself.
This is a big one TBH. Many programmers are very arrogant with their own abilities I have found.

And I speak from someone who just finished a 1 year massive refactor on a million line codebase that WAS worth it and DID save the project in its entirety. (but the code was BROKEN when I got it, not crappy)

Re:As a writer of crappy code..

[Draek]

To be fair, many of the older C/C++ generation can't write their own algorithms either, for them the idea of an algorithm is "trick to make the computer do something faster" (bitwise operators and pointer arithmetic are a perennial favorite) rather than "redesign of the solution to reduce the work needed". They make a faster and more efficient Bubble Sort instead of just replacing it with a Quick Sort, to put it some way. And the older FORTRAN/COBOL guys are even worse in that respect.

If anything, Java and C# encourage programmers to learn proper algorithms by letting them focus on the core ideas and grand design rather than crude, line-by-line optimizations. Of course, Python, Ruby and Lua are even better, and pseudo-code with a human corrector is the ideal for that, but I take what I can get.

So yeah, I think all these elitism is just a big pile of horseshit. Sturgeon's Law applies to everything and everyone, of this generation and otherwise.