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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"
Most of these are obvious and well understood.
Some (slightly less obvious) ones:
- Something must be wrong with this library (that is used successfully by everyone else)
- Theoretically two threads could try to change that variable at the same time, but it’ll never actually happen
- Just about anything starting with "no one will ever"
- Anyone who wants to use this class will look at the code / documentation and see that they can't actually use it in that (usually intuitive) manner.
Also can we please stop posting articles from itworld. They are all the same: tiny bits of content split over a ridiculous number of pages to maximize ad revenue.
Seriously, this is like 1990s levels of ad spamming. First you have the full window click through ad, then you have ads on every 10 word slide, a click through in the middle of the slides, and then just for good measure the last slide isn’t a content slide but yet another ad!
I feel like I need 10 levels of toolbars and bonzo-buddy running in the background to really appreciate the experience of this site.
My personal favorite! *sigh* Oh well.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
"My facial hair makes me look interesting and makes up for my lack of social graces."
"I need to pick wacky, completely abstract name (that have nothing to do with function) for the new thing I made...that's a novel idea that will make it easy for people to remember!!"
ex: Yahoo, whatsapp, tumblr, Gentoo, etc etc
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'll document this code once I'm done.
n/a
Lie 10: itworld.com has interesting, informative, insightful, and meaningful content.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
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.
oh uhh lies programmers tell themselves..
how about
this new website design is going to be great, our users will love it!
"Well if you let the programmers run the show, things would be so much better."
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
http://deslide.clusterfake.net... OR http://desli.de/11IH for one ugly web page to read all at once! ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Good code rarely needs commenting though. Too many comments are often an indicator of poorly organized code.
Dear person who thinks that "good code rarely needs commenting": the entire world wants to beat you senseless with a nine iron.
You're welcome.
1) People will enjoy this content more if it's in a slideshows.
2) It's OK if ad-blocking breaks my core javascript functionality.
3) Nobody is going to view this site in a modern browser.
* Changing X will have absolutely no effect on Y since I don't know any place where Y references X.
* I'll just take care of all the small bugs first before tackling this monster deliverable.
* Pulling this code out of the client and putting it into a store procedure won't break anything.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I'm behind a firewall
As soon as I've finished the main part, I will go back and deal with any sections I've flagged with # TODO
#DeleteChrome
"Screw comments! It was hard to write, it should be hard to read!"
It should work in any browser.
"Users love slide shows!"
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I have lots of time to get this code done.....I'll catch up on Slashdot's articles......
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.)
"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.
that does not work _at_all_ if you have a halfway decent content- and tracking-blocker installed
...well, once you've blocked the content, and once you've blocked the tracking, there's not much left to work with, yeah?
:D
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
"If we rewrite this from scratch, it'll be WAY better!"
People that don't think that they need to fix compiler warnings produce programs that aren't always reliable.
And even if the code is free of warnings - there may still be a need to run 'lint', 'findbugs' or any similar tool that does a more thorough analysis of the code in order to detect problems that can grow over time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If I keep working these extra hours, the company will reward me with big raises and job security.
I think you have the wrong xkcd https://xkcd.com/974/ BTW, this one is on the door to my office.
As it was explained to me by a marketing guy, "Unfortunately, 'your machine' is not a sufficiently large market."
Our multiplayer servers can handle the load on release day
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.