• theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
        102·
        6 days ago

        Nope, sorry. I just break my code into neatly grouped chunks, and I’m very consistent

        I regularly go “I need something to do X”, and when I go to write it it’s already there. It does exactly what I need it to do, otherwise why would I name it X and not X_for_situation_y? I would never

        My utility functions are reusable, my classes handle their own logic internally, and so my business logic is clean and readable. My code flows straight and clear, along a single path whenever possible

        So yeah… When I start working with people, there’s the initial confusion then this moment where they go “Oh! That’s really easy to understand”

          • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
            4·
            6 days ago

            Yes, but only ship of thesius style

            I’ve seen how people code, I’m writing my own stack on the way up

          • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
            52·
            6 days ago

            But honestly, it’s probably because I have ideasthesia. I feel ideas tactically

            Bad code feels slimy, problem areas feel like sharp angles, good code feels clean and smooth, like a smooth river stone with clean even grooves that gracefully curve

            Best advice I can give is to strive to write elegant code. I don’t strictly follow style guides or do docstrings… These are superficial. I try to match the style of the project, but my code is consistent even in projects that are not

            Elegant code is pretty, regardless of formatting. You’ll know it when you see it, junior devs will follow the patterns without instruction. It does not require explanation, it does exactly what you think it does, and it makes complex problems simple

  • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    18·
    7 days ago

    I’m living this right now. The lead programmers are long gone for a setup that uses Python, C++, and Linux. The only other guy who knows it is pulled to three other projects and I only have a C++ class taken over 15 years ago under my belt. I’m somehow expected to decipher this shit and explain the function of a few dozen variables and it’s going as well as one might expect.

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
    3·
    6 days ago

    Developers who think they’re following the patterns, but they never even read the books and they’re still just doing whatever but naming it like it’s the pattern.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 days ago

    The self documenting code: short acronyms, that will make you go “AHA!” after hours of rubber ducking.

  • ttyybb@lemmy.world
    1251·
    7 days ago

    A skilled programmer can make self documenting code, so I always document mine.

    • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
      232·
      7 days ago

      Nah. No code actually documents itself. Ever. Anyone who says they can is an idiot that doesn’t understand the purpose of comments and docs.

      Code can never describe intent, context, or consequences unless you read every line of code in every library and framework used, and every external call. Especially if they aren’t doing “fail fast” correctly.

        • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
          16·
          7 days ago

          I did not say comments should directly explain what the code is obviously attempting to do.

          • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
            17·
            7 days ago

            My favorite thing about the “all comments are bad” crowd is that their first example is almost always something like this:

            // Add 1 to x
x = x + 1

            Like, nobody that thinks comments are good and important would ever add a useless comment like that. The point of commenting is to add documentation (usually the only form of documentation that a future developer is ever going to read) only to code that would otherwise be inscrutable.

            • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              6·
              6 days ago

              You’d think that, and yet I’ve once worked in a project in a fortune 500 company that basically wouldn’t even compile if we didn’t add comments like that. No kidding the compiler enforced specific comment patterns so if you had a line do x = x + 1, it would not compile if it was not preceded by a comment that started with “Add” and included “1” and “to x”. Even in dev mode if you wanted to just try something you had to comment everything.

              The original dev was super proud of this tools that generated HTML documentation about everything based on those comments. And the whole documentation was stuff like:

              *price*: The price
    • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.socialEnglish
      29·
      7 days ago

      I inherited a code base probably written by a squirrel, and the first thing I did was to write documentation on infrastructure, business logic, architecture, deployment and whatever. I had to read everything anyways, because the guy handing it over had no idea what it did and left the company shortly after. It’s fine now, but that path was horrible.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
    691·
    7 days ago
    /*
By all accounts, the logic in this method shouldn't work. And yet it does. We do not know why. It makes no sense whatsoever. It took three weeks and numerous offerings to the programming gods, including using one of the junior devs as a human sacrifice, to unlock this knowledge. DO NOT LET HIS VIOLENT AND UNTIMELY DEATH BE IN VAIN! Touch this at your own peril.
--jubilationtcornpone 12/17/25
*/
public async Task<IResult> CalculateResultAsync()
{
     // Some ass backwards yet miraculously functional logic.
}
    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      7 days ago

      That long-ass horizontal scroll bar reminds me of how I used to put unfindable easter eggs into my Visual Basic apps. I would have amusing little messages pop up from time to time in message boxes. To prevent anyone from just searching for the exact text in the message box, I would reduce it to a series of concatenated Chr() statements and then I would put like 200 characters of whitespace in front of the message box call. The only way anybody would spot it would be if they noticed the horizontal scroll bar this produced and nobody ever did.

      At least that’s my theory. It’s also possible that nobody ever used the software that I produced.

      • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        A friend of mine used to teach coding decades ago and one story I’ll never forget is about the student who had an assignment that asked for a “for” loop to be used, but they didn’t quite know how to use it so they just wrote a broken loop there and then hid a “while” loop at the far end of the line.

        Code compiled, had a “for” loop and had the right output.