Comment by hyperdeficit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperdeficit | Hacker News Reader

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This is a real problem in our industry. We all like to think that we 'know' how to write good code, after all we read 'Clean Code' once. That, combined with either overconfidence in our abilities or the negative perception that comes with not knowing the answer to every problem leads to a lot of software that has applied 'good' coding practices and architecture to produce a mess of awful code.

In reality it is probably a lot more like learning how to apply any other concept, it takes practice, yet we don't spend enough time practicing our craft. This is particularly a problem because in the course of developing a product you will only get to implement a new solution to a problem a few times at best, or once more likely. This means we don't get enough experience with the different possible approaches to really internalize what a 'good' solution looks like.

We spend much more time learning the software development approach du jour, XP, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, etc. It doesn't matter what software development approach you use if the output is an unmaintainable mess of code.

Honestly the best way to go about this, in my mind, is to make criticism ok in our industry. I've been trying my hardest to get someone I know to comment on my implementation of a CS280 homework I've been working on. I want to get to the point where I can properly write this code so it is readable to everyone. It seems like every time I ask someone to do this I'm told "Why would you want me to tell you how to code"

That's insane! I think that a goal of any programming course around the world should instill the idea that getting your peers to modify and read your code is a must in our industry. People need to be able to com along, see what you've done, and understand it.

If anyone want's to comment on my code that I'm talking about in this example it can be found here:

Implementation: https://git.gravypod.com/gravypod/school/tree/master/cs280/h...

Assignment: https://web.njit.edu/~gwryan/CS280/CS280-Program-1-Fall-2016...

I've attempted to live up to what I think is "good code" but no one want's to tell me if I'm right or wrong or even discuss this for fear of hurting my feelings I presume. I always get "run valgrind or a linter on it" and I've done that and come up with no ways for improvement. Everything is all opinion and no fact in this business of code cleanliness although this should be a cornerstone topic for the software development industry.

Have you tried codereview.stackexchange.com? I find it can be a nice way to learn what others prefer and get tips for improving clarity especially in languages that I'm new to.

That's a hard thing to get. A lot of people will play shitty status games and make feedback to try to prove they're more clever than you. And since people do that, genuine feedback can often get interpreted that way.

That's a good point. There's bad code. And then there's that's not how I would do it code. Too often, in public the latter gets treated like the former. When you're still open to learning this is confusing. That is, do I suck? Or is that feedback coming from an asshole?

The thing that taught me the most was writing an application and having to maintain it for 4 years. You see where the pain points are (as you end up revisiting them often), and you have no one to blame but yourself. You learn from your own mistakes.

I also learn from other mistakes as well. I has a habit of inlining conditionals in python -

   if False : continue

until I noticed that the same style made reading someone elses code harder. I didn't notice it in my own code as I was more familiar with it. When I did notice I stopped doing that.

Keeping the logic as close to the data as possible helps as well (ideally in the data schema if possible). I think Linus's quote about bad programmers worry about the code, good programmers worry about the data and their relationships is true for most of not all levels of the stack.

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