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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

and do you find this takes longer or shorter than just doing it yourself from scratch?

I’m with you. Sometimes it really just feels like we’re just tacking on the cognitive load of managing the drunk senior in addition to the problem of hand instead of just dealing with the problem at hand.

A hundred times more time is spent reading a given piece of code, than it took writing it, in the lifetime of that program.

OK I made up the statistic, but the core idea is true, and it's something that is rarely considered in this debate. At least with code you wrote, you can probably recognize it later when you need to maintain it or just figure out what it does.

Most code is never read, to be honest.

In the olden days I read the code I wrote probably 2-3 times while in the process of reading it, and then almost always once in full just before submitting it.

Quite a bit shorter. Plus I can do the a good chunk of the work (first iteration) in contexts where I couldn't before, where I require less focus, and it uses less of my energy.

I think I can also end up with a better result, and having learned more myself. It's just better in a whole host of directions all at once.

I don't end up intimately familiar with the solution however. Which I think is still a major cost.

Not OP, I don't care if it's the same amount of time because I can do it drunk/while doing other things. Not sure why how long does it take is the be all end all for some people.

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