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Lies Programmers Tell Themselves
itwbennett writes "Everybody lies to themselves now and again in both their personal lives ('my bathroom scale probably needs to be recalibrated') and professional lives ('this code doesn't need commenting'). ITworld has compiled some of the common lies programmers tell themselves. Here are a few examples: 'This bug won't take long to fix.' 'No one could possibly fail to understand my simple user interface.' 'Code is self documenting.' 'My homebrew framework will be nimble, lightweight, debugged, and easy to use.' 'I know this is dirty code, I will rewrite it later.' 'It's just one line... it won't break anything.' '"It works on my machine.' 'I don't need version control.' 'It's written in ____, so it'll be easy to ____.' What would you add to this list?"
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
We arn't beating a dead horse here. We are beating the pink stain on the floor where the horse used to be. While we are at it, lets talk about how shitty airline food is.
My contribution: this is just a prototype to show that this will work, the real version will be implemented properly.
"Well if you let the programmers run the show, things would be so much better."
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
"All our users are complaining bitterly about these changes, but I'm sure once they get used to it they will see we had it right all along."
See also: gnome
What the ? I can't understand this code straight away without thinking about the problem or why they wrote it this way? It's shit!
Actually, a lot of problems are complex, and there isn't a single straightforward way to implement it. It could be that doing it the obvious way works - up to a certain point, and then the whole thing needs writing in a new totally non-obvious more complex way, in order to cope with x. (latency, bandwidth, text encoding, ACID compliance, European data protection law, occasonal data spikes which make the stack explode if you use a recursive function, certain servers only having python 2.6 on them still, etc. etc. etc.)
GIMP is just a cute acronym for "GNU Image Manipulator," and will in no way make people not take this application seriously or hesitate to adopt it in any serious environment.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"These specs are now exactly what the client wants, no need to think of eventualities"
"Nobody will ever need that feature"
"I don't need to comment that, it's obvious what it does"
"Once the prototype runs, it's going to be easy"
"I'll do it right, then I'll never ever have to touch it again"
"One last meeting to go to"
"There's no possible way this could become a security risk"
$change + "can't break anything"
"It COULD create a race condition in theory, but it can't happen in reality"
And finally, the ever popular
"I'll just slap something together now so we can ship it, I'll eventually get around to do it right"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let us not forget that almost every framework you "should use" started out as a framework that "shouldn't be written." Only after enough people changed their mind, did the original author(s) become visionaries instead of "people who reinvented the wheel." I find that the tendency to "don't write that, it's already been written!" has been greatly blown out of proportion and people are allergic to actual software engineering. In other words, if they do more than extend / implement a predefined interface or glorified configuration on a single class instance... like heaven forbid they define an interface, base class, or object model with multiple things that derive it, then by god, they've gone too far! There is a time and place for frameworks, and realizing that the time and place isn't "every freak'n time" is just as important as not constantly reinventing the wheel.
"If we rewrite this from scratch, it'll be WAY better!"
As it was explained to me by a marketing guy, "Unfortunately, 'your machine' is not a sufficiently large market."
Here's a short list of interface lies....
1) My error message is meaningful and helpful.
Sure. Like, "Can't find file" with no explicit reference ON THE DIALOG as to the the file name you typed in or the path it was supposed to be in, because God knows, we wouldn't want the user to be able to tell IN A SECOND where the problem was. No, let's make the user *dig* for it.
2) It's OK to shove warning and alert dialogs into people's faces.
After all, when we're at a restaruant, don't we *all* want the waiter to interrupt every few seconds with the night's special, warnings about peanuts, and the effect of alcohol on pregnant women. It's just as wonderful and helpful in software.
3) It's OK to make users wait.
Because users care *so much* about your little issues with processes or your inability to put things into separate threads while you keep the interface alive. I mean, when you're in a restaurant, don't you *love* it when the waiter ignores you because they've got something better to do?
4) It's best to steal input focus from the user.
After all, who knows where they'll type? And so what if they're already doing something else, what could be more important than MY little dialog? Modal dialog, of course, because they shouldn't do anything else until they pay attention to ME!
5) We'll help the user by refreshing his whole screen!
I mean, there's just nothing better than the waiter who rearranges everything on the table after you've started eating, just to make sure you have everything and the food is truly fresh! Of course, this couldn't be a bad habit of lazy, uncaring programmers who couldn't be bothered to get the screen or list right the first time before presentation. No. Certainly not.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.