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7 Fabulous Ways to Great Programming

theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com

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'5. Still reading? I thought you'd wizened up by now?'

http://www.answers.com/wizened&r=67

wiz·ened (wĭz'ənd) adj.

Withered; wizen.

http://www.answers.com/wise

phrasal verb:

wise up Slang. To make or become aware, informed, or sophisticated.

He means "wisened". "Wizened" is how you feel after getting all the way through Steve Yegge's archive.

Yep, it should be wisened. Funny enough, I think my stupid spell checker changed it on me on my last round of proofing. Can't trust these stupid computers, can you?

1 Fabulous way to have a chance of being a half-decent writer: don't write like this guy.

Talk about wrapping a stinking fish in a giant ball of tabloid newspapers...

I didn't bother reading more than the first few paragraphs. I expect the quality of writing to be a few notches above the level of speech. This article's style simply doesn't cut it, mostly because of excessive jovialness.

From about 3/4 of the way through:

"In point of fact, if this whole article is "TL;DR" then there is no way you're code is going to be "great". Just ain't happening. It may be a hell of lot of other things, most of which are destined to entertain people on WTF, but it certainly ain't ever going to be great, and probably not even good."

It's not too long, it's too badly written (as exemplified by this "you're" among other things). There's none of Yegge's articles I didn't read fully once I started and I don't need to tell you how long they are.

edit: I read the whole thing, it's really horrible how the bad style and orthograph makes it hard to focus on what's said. Speaking of focus, it's really ironic to get a big lecture about how important the ability to focus is coming from someone who can't even focus enough to write proper English (your/you're, their/they're, come on):

"If you are finding that reading a multi-page blog essay is far too long, then you are clearly having problems focusing. [...] However, it's not all bad. If you've made it this far -- and it wasn't just blind luck in skipping text -- then it means you do have some ability to focus. It might just be a good idea to work on that a little, or possible a lot. Focus. Focus. Focus."

Stylistic issues and common deformations (ya, ain't, cause) aside, here's the objective mistakes I found:

  "Get on with it", *you're* inner voice is screaming, adding in "just give me the *highlites*, the bullet points, the summary, dude.
 These things may help you if you've already had exposure, but they just ain't *the* got the knowledge in them.
 If you want the knowledge then *you've have* to get the knowledge, otherwise you know nothing.
 "Well, I don't want to waste my precious time read someone else's long rambling crud!", *you're might* be screaming by now.
 [...]
 But *its* impossible to squish all of the knowledge into summary.
 [...]
 Honestly, *you* a roving accident waiting to happen.
 [...]
 Ponder it, *its* not hard once you get used to it.
 If they're out there telling you otherwise, you know *their* just blowing smoke.
 [...]
 then *you're* problem is
 [...]
 then there is no way *you're* code is going to be "great"

As a last point, I found him pretty unwarrantly condescending.

The deformations are there on purpose, I was trying to give it an edgy style, otherwise it just doesn't appeal to the audience I am trying to reach.

I fixed the other typos, as there were unintentional, just a byproduct of fast sloppy editing :-) It's writing, and it's an opinion, so I rather get it out there with a few typos, spelling mistakes and bad grammar, then just sit on it forever.

Giving it an edgy style is one thing. Giving birth to an incoherent and pointless rant is another. In this case, I'm afraid you failed and did the second one.

Generally, I try to write more formally, but then I often get complaints about being too stiff and too long.

The crazy bit about blogging is that there is at least one complaint for everything you write. Just proves that you can't make everybody happy. Still, I liked it :-)

See also: Peter Norvig's Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

I do like the idea of bullet points as junk food. good analogy.

Mid-way down the rant, I found this hidden gem, in the form of, you guessed it: bullet points.

1. good programmers write good code.

2. good code is neat and simple.

3. good code is consistent.

Number two, especially, caught my eye. Let me see if I can generalize that.

"Good communication is neat and simple."

Kind of argues against his point, doesn't he?

Oddly, good communication is nearly the complete opposite from good code. Your code should be boring, consistent and obvious. It makes it easier to fix that way. Writing should vary, be inconsistent, approach things from different angles, and often be redundant. It needs to be messy enough to keep the human mind interested; although too many little irritants like spelling and grammar can be disruptive. Some structure is good, but too much spoils the flow. It's a balance.

Something in my intuition says (though I'm not sure if it's to be trusted), that if your code has the chance to be any of those things, you aren't writing it elegantly enough. The best code I've seen reads as a set of revelations (macros) followed by one short, simple bit of glue that feeds library functions to them. (Of course, those building libraries might think differently.)

The stuff I've always liked is usually really obvious. For example, if it's complex tree code, you don't have to spend a lot of time digging into the details; what the code is trying to do is obvious by its steps. Clean, clear, simple and consistent. Boring is an unfair categorization. I meant it in terms of not being clever, but it is really an attribute of the observer, not the code.

The best test I think is in how fast you can make a meaningful change to the code, without having ever seen it or studied it before. In a practical sense, that is the only metric that matters anyways. We write this stuff, so we can maintain it and keep it running. It's not the first version that matters, it's the whole life span.

I think we agree here: you're talking about "complex tree code", which, for me, is the realm of libraries, not applications. Those are allowed to be boring (and thus perfect), predictable (and thus with a clean API), and so on.

1 Fabulous Way to Great Programming: Write Code.

Geez, does anyone know the difference between correlation and causation anymore?

This is just another one of those meaningless, "If a, then b must be true" posts. "I watch Star Trek, therefore I must be a good programmer."

The only measure of good programming is the code you write and the value it produces. So stop reading B.S. blogs and go write some code.

To write good code, practice every day, forever.

Or: Never stop learning.

Summary - practice makes perfect. By the author's own admission ... stop reading articles like these and "Focus" on your coding.

(but read my other articles, you know, the longer ones with more detail :-)

FAIL: "their" != "they are"

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