Coding is when we're least productive

(codemanship.wordpress.com)

38 points | by vinhnx 9 hours ago

8 comments

  • Nevermark 3 hours ago
    Coding is when we carefully write down our solution to a problem.

    (Manager pushes paper, pen and a list of problems in front of you and demands, “Now write, just write! And fast!”)

  • polyamid23 54 minutes ago
    „Managers aim to maximise the amount of code their dev teams produce, and so they maximise the time devs spend writing code.„

    Never seen that happen. Do not know anyone who experienced this. Where and who are those managers?

    • vjvjvjvjghv 29 minutes ago
      At my team deleted code is the best code.
    • bowsamic 51 minutes ago
      Same, when I do pair programming with my boss he’s very happy if we managed to remove more code than we added
  • cjfd 1 hour ago
    E.W. Dijkstra: "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight".

    Personally, I think, much of the art of programming is to do as much as possible with as few lines of code as possible.

    • sedatk 58 minutes ago
      That’s Bill Gates’, not Dijkstra’s.
      • bryanrasmussen 10 minutes ago
        measuring aphorism worth by attribution is like architecture about drowning.
    • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
      Agree, and even better solution some times: no code at all.
    • solumunus 1 hour ago
      There’s more to it than that though. The solution using the least possible lines is often inscrutable and brittle. The art is in finding the right level of abstraction which can deliver the performance required while being sufficiently legible. Depending on the specific problem you have to weight your solution accordingly, if performance is critical you must often forfeit legibility. The art is in recognising and dealing with trade offs.
  • soanvig 2 hours ago
    Oh, that must be fun to be hired by the client directly... I wish each my programming job was not an ivory tower :(
    • hahahahhaah 58 minutes ago
      I think the ivory towers because managers mostly manage by how much of the plan can we ship. It is too radical to have developers take time from that to talk to customers which is a shame for the developer, customer and business.
  • wiseowise 1 hour ago
    So the only anecdote you could find from your long career is one example at the start of your contracting? What the hell with all those low quality shite talking about code this, code that?

    > Founder of Codemanship Ltd and code craft coach and trainer

    Ooh, it’s all coming together.

  • BrenBarn 1 hour ago
    This is one reason I always roll my eyes when people talk about how vim keyboard bindings are so great because you don't have to move your fingers from the home row. The actual action of typing text is a small part of the process of coding.
    • mr_mitm 25 minutes ago
      Is anybody claiming it makes you more productive at writing code? I just find it more convenient and more comfortable.
    • sevenzero 1 hour ago
      Depends on how you work I guess. I explore solutions through coding different versions of some algorithm, sure I could theorycraft as well but I am stronger by just writing code and see if it runs. I type a lot so vim motions help me a ton.
  • gethly 2 hours ago
    Coding is the 5 minute result for an hour of thinking.
    • shinycode 35 minutes ago
      Many non-dev people think LLM does the thinking and the typing. That’s where the misconception comes from as regards to LLM replacing completely developers I guess
    • vjvjvjvjghv 27 minutes ago
      How do you define “coding”? In my mind the thinking is part of coding.
  • testing12_12 1 hour ago
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