[highCs]

So I have a theory that may explains things here. Here it is.

There is 3 levels of programmers.

Level 1 is the beginner. A level 1 programmer is barely able to make a complete app or lib. His work simply rarely works. The code has no sense, is full of bugs, it's a complete mess, and the user has a very poor experience (if an experience at all).

Then comes the level 2 programmer. The novice. The novice learnt about OOP, design patterns, DRY, single responsability principle, importance of testing, etc. The only problem with the level 2 programmer is that he overdoes everything. He is victim of overengineering. He is able to make a complete app with a decent UX and the quality of the code is dramatically better, but his productivity is low. Really, really low. Everything takes month. Every single change is a project. 10 actual lines of codes need to be changed? That's 10 classes, 250 lines of unit tests, it requires 3 classes to be refactored, and on and on.

Finally, there is the level 3 programmer. The level 3 programmer is a programmer that does level 2 programming in a smarter way. His first principle is less code. That doesn't mean the code must be complete shit, but the level 3 engineer understand the real enemy and that all problems grow with it exponentially: code. The level 3 programmer knows, understand and apply the principles of the level 2 programmer, but he just does the right amount of them. Not too much.

If he has to, the level 3 programmer gonna err on the side of the level 1 code and will avoid as much as he can level 2 code. That's because level 1 code cost less to fix than level 2 code.

Now here comes my point: a level 2 programmer read and write articles that is about how to not be a level 1 programmer.

[whatever_dude]

> If he has to, the level 3 programmer gonna err on the side of the level 1 code and will avoid as much as he can level 2 code. That's because level 1 code cost less to fix than level 2 code.

I've been doing this recently and had a hard time justifying it even to myself. It just felt right. And you've got it - it's easier to fix dumb code, than refactor an overengineered mess.

> Now here comes my point: a level 2 programmer read and write articles that is about how to not be a level 1 programmer.

You're making me understand the current programming "scene" much better, especially the plethora of self-aggrandizing blog posts I tend to see today.

I wish I could upvote you twice.

[Jtsummers]

http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html

I disagree that level 1 programmers necessarily produce poor code. But they're stuck at such a low level of understanding of abstractions that they either abuse abstractions to hell (but not in a level 2 sense) or don't use them at all.

The good level 3 programmer understands that there are times to call a function, times to create class hierarchies, times to create generators, times to use high level abstractions. But they generally err on the side of lower abstractions, or higher abstractions only where they aid clarity, reduces true redundancy, or similar.

But the most important thing about a level 3 programmer is that they aren't dogmatic. Dogma both frees and constrains the developer. It frees them from the requirement to think, because dogma says "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not". It constrains them because when things fall outside the dogma, they want to make the heretical code conform, or they discard it and start over.

[mariobertschler]

> it's easier to fix dumb code, than refactor an overengineered mess

Very True!

[V-2]

That depends on circumstances really. Yeah it's easy to fix dumb code... unless there's 10 tons of it

I once worked with about 1.5 million LOC worth of "naive" PHP code. It was one big e-commerce system. The SSOT principle wasn't followed, certain assumptions were scattered all over the place.

For example the fact that a product could only ever belong to a single size group. The task we were given was to remove this constraint. It took a few man-years of work, because it was hardcoded EVERYWHERE, from database scripts to frontend JS. And don't even get me started on how many bugs angry customers encountered before it got kind of stable.

It wasn't overengineered, just dumb, and a lot of it. I'd much prefer having to deal with some matryoshka OOP abstractions - they could be merged, simplified etc. In such case there are certain tricks in our disposal. Tricks that scale. If it's just a big ball of mud: not much you can do. It's pretty much a physical job, like counting grains of sand on the beach.

[qznc]

When you design a system, you always have a tradeoff between flexibility and simplicity. Extreme flexibility means over-engineering and complexity. Simplicity means less flexibility, because of a lot assumptions are hard-coded. The best design is the one which hits the sweet spot: As simple as possible, as flexible as necessary. That requires knowing the future, though.

If you want to increase flexibility later, like "remove the constraint that a product could only ever belong to a single size group", it inherently means to hunt down all the places where this assumption has been hard-coded.

Should you err on the side of flexibility or simplicity? Simplicity means the assumption hunt is costly, but maybe you never need it (YAGNI). Err for flexibility, you pay the constant cost of dealing with the API complexity, but you surely avoid some costly assumption hunts.

Usually, startup prefer simplicity because they will pivot anyways. In contrast, enterprise prefers flexibility, so they can plan years ahead and things stay in the budget.

[alephnil]

> As simple as possible, as flexible as necessary. That requires knowing the future.

Knowing the future in this case should usually mean that you have requests for a feature from customers, but you don't have time to do it in this version. At least that is something I find useful as a rule of thumb. If that is not the case, you should really think twice before making it flexible rather than simple.

[nicholasjon]

> As simple as possible, as flexible as necessary.

That really resonates with me.

[ultramancool]

Well said.

I was recently passed off a project from someone who didn't have a development background but had been working on C++... the amount of copy-paste, repetitive if statements and fixed length arrays makes the original code almost completely unusable and I was forced to suggest a total rewrite.

[taneq]

> If it's just a big ball of mud: not much you can do. It's pretty much a physical job, like counting grains of sand on the beach.

You can refactor as you go. It doesn't save you from sifting through the entire ball of mud, but at least it means you won't have to do it again in quite such a bad way.

[collyw]

I have had nightmares doing both. One of them ongoing.

[edem]

Same here. I started applying LEAN lately and I'm more productive than ever. I just stopped creating interfaces and as-atomic-as-possible components in favor of simple but sometimes dumb classes which do the heavy lifting and can be easily replaced by more robust code when it is needed.

[bunderbunder]

There's another dimension that I think you're missing, which is having sensible levels of abstraction.

A good, easy to understand codebase is one that has a minimal number of components that interact with each other in a well-organized and easty-to-understand manner. Those components, in turn, should each be made of a minimal number of sub-components that interact with each other in a clear, well-organized manner. And on down until you hit bedrock. Doing this is essential because it sets up boundaries that limit the amount of code and interactions that you need to juggle in your head at any one moment.

A programmer who doesn't understand this will produce horrible, tangled, tightly-coupled code regardless of whether they're doing it with a boiling soup of global variables or a boiling soup composed together from tiny "well-factored" classes that all implement interfaces containing only a single CQRS-compliant method.

I'd submit that there's another level of programmer, let's call it the SubGenius programmer (because the term tickles me) who thinks that levels 1, 2 and 3 programmers all share a sloppy work ethos and need to spend more time stepping back to keep an eye on how the forest looks instead of obsessing about trees all the time.

[handojin]

Does a SubGenius programmer use Slack?

[blowski]

I have to confess that I am probably a level 2 programmer, and the only thing that stops me is pair programming and code reviews. I always start out with good intentions, but the little "what if?" devil on my shoulder whispers things like "What if you need to change that dependency?" and off I go creating an AbstractFactoryFactoryManagerServiceInterface. At the time, his comments just sound so sensible and wise. The only way for me to snap out of it is when the "good programming fairy" is on my other shoulder (probably my colleague) saying "Do you really think that's necessary?"

[qznc]

Finding the right balance between those is the Art of Design.

Since ageism is a hot topic now: This is one point where experience pays off. The graybeard has acquired a better gut feeling when something is necessary and when it is not.

[ultramancool]

This is why I frequently ask up the chain to confirm requirements in a "is it ever possible we might want to do X?" way quite often. Getting outright "no"s will often help to simplify your design and if it comes back to bite you in the ass, you just tell them you asked and will now need additional time to redesign and refactor.

[6t6t6t6]

In other words:

The level 2 programmer knows that the tomato is a fruit. The level 3 programmer knows that it is not a good idea to put it in a fruit salad.

[the_other]

Please consider replacing all the "he"s with a word less gender-defining ("they", "s/he", "ve" etc). The entire gender spectrum can code if they want to and they should feel included rather than excluded.

[VarFarYonder]

> Please consider replacing all the "he"s with a word less gender-defining ("they", "s/he", "ve" etc). The entire gender spectrum can code if they want to and they should feel included rather than excluded.

The vast majority of programmers are male, so (ignoring that he can be used in a gender neutral way) it's natural to use he in such a situation. I'm not saying it's right or wrong -- I'm not sure what influence using gender-specific pronouns has. Although I will say that if someone used she when discussing a field that is dominated by women, like veterinary science, as a man I wouldn't feel excluded or put off from exploring the field if I had an interest in it. It's also interesting to note that the same furor over gender inequality in subjects like computer science isn't replicated when the shoe is on the other foot.

I think there is a tendency in western culture at the moment to confuse factual differences in behaviour between men and women with ethical issues about equal opportunity. Equal opportunity doesn't necessarily result in a 50/50 gender split in all fields. Christina H. Sommers puts it better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA

[blowski]

Please please please, for the love of programming, let's not turn this into another one of _those_ conversations. Use it, don't use it, just don't start flame wars.

[didibus]

Your hypothetical doesn't apply. There's no way for you to know the subconscious impact in the long term that everything being referred with "she" would have on your interest in Veterinary work, if you did have one. It's not something you can mentally put yourself in, and know for sure it would not bother you.

Also, I think this was kind of apropos. Seems like the English language isn't using the right levels of abstractions. There should be a true gender neutral pronoun, one that should be used when the gender specificity isn't relevant and should be hidden away behind the pronoun's abstraction. Its just not something we're familiar with, and that's really the only problem. Its hard to force language on people, when everyone learns language effortlessly as they grow up, nobody is used to putting effort in how they talk.

[VarFarYonder]

> Its just not something we're familiar with, and that's really the only problem. Its hard to force language on people, when everyone learns language effortlessly as they grow up, nobody is used to putting effort in how they talk.

I don't think that's the only problem here. Consider this story: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/08/03/student-facing-50-...

These sorts of situations are a direct result of the battle "to force language on people", and they are having a big effect on our society. Sethi paid a high cost for a single tweet that wasn't intended to be malicious in any way. And people who read such stories note this, and as a result feel like they must tread on eggshells, because, even though they aren't racist or sexist or any other ist, one small slip up may result in their entire education or career being put at risk.

A populous that is scared to say anything is much easier to control. And I think the powerful are going to get what they want with this. In a couple of decades, I think free speech will be a distant memory, and people like yourself will be questioning the future you helped bring about.

[rascul]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/he

: that person

[the_other]

I like how the OED calls Merriam-Webster sexist in this regard: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/he

[bobthechef]

This is just silly. Besides, grammatically, "he" is a gender neutral pronoun when referring to a person of unspecified gender (as in other languages). "They" is plural. "Ve" is not a word. "S/he" is awkward and unnecessary (and hey, we can argue that it is misandrous because you're capitalizing the "S" and prioritizing "She" over "he"; if you argue that it doesn't matter, then the same can be said about "he").

[dragonwriter]

> Besides, grammatically, "he" is a gender neutral pronoun when referring to a person of unspecified gender (as in other languages).

No, grammatically, "he" always has masculine gender [0]; its historically-accepted (though increasingly-less-so) semantics include use in reference to a person of unspecified (socially-ascribed) gender (classically, use of personal programs in English maps best to socially-ascribed gender, which has not taken gender identity much into account -- recently, there's been a move to align socially-ascribed gender with gender identity, but pronoun use basically follows the former which just happens to have a growing norm of also aligning with the latter.)

> "They" is plural

"They" is grammatically plural and gender-neutral, but has a very long history of accepted use with semantics of referring to an individual of unspecified (socially-ascribed) gender. This acceptance was somewhat reduced by the Victorian fad of Latin-inspired prescriptivism in English, but this reductions is among those of that fads effects that have been fading over recent decades.

[0] Note that grammatic gender is a distinct concept from either socially ascribed gender of a person, gender identity of a person, or biological sex of a person.

[the_other]

> This is just silly

Given an HN reader took the trouble to email me their thanks for my comment, I respectfully disagree. To do this, they had find my email address by following some of my other comments, linking to a website, following through to github... The email they wrote was articulate. They put in real effort to say "thanks".

> "he" is a gender neutral pronoun when referring to a person of unspecified gender (as in other languages).

In some dictionaries, yes. A possible counter-argument to this is that the tradition of that usage comes from cultures with significant inbuilt misogyny.

> "They" is plural.

Sometimes. - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/they - http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbin...

> "Ve" is not a word.

I can read it, write it, say it and find other like usages in numerous places. To me, that reflects most of the necessary facets of "a word". - https://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com - http://vevemvir.tumblr.com - http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Art/eganrev.html - http://www.dictionary.com/browse/etymology - http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Made-Up-Word

> "S/he" is awkward and unnecessary

Agreed. I dislike this form. A similar option is to alternate use of "he" and "she". This form is common, and probably the simplest. I wish I'd suggested it.

> we can argue that it is misandrous because you're capitalizing the "S" and prioritizing "She" over "he"

That was you, not me.

[aninhumer]

> "They" is plural.

Singular "they" is a widely recognised usage.

And the idea that "he" is gender neutral always seemed to me like a post-rationalisation for people's androcentrism than any kind of well founded rule.

[cjcenizal]

Thanks for making this suggestion! This is a good habit to fall into. It has no downside for you as a writer; only upside.

[zild3d]

Singular they or s/he would be fine, but personally I've never heard of "ve", which I had to look up and doesn't even appear on the first page of google.

[triplesec]

This is a really good point. We really do want to encourage women in this field, and it's a shame that dudes are downvoting this (and I'm male).

[witty_username]

How do you know dudes (male people right?) are downvoting this?

[grotsnot]

I'm a dude, he's a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes

[triplesec]

It's far less likely a woman or nonbinary would downvote this for I should think obvious reasons

[tzakrajs]

Dude is unisex these days, and i think the original claim is also ignoring non-binary people who conform neither to male or female gender stereotypes (wrt wanting more women in tech). we should also want to increase visibility of non binary people

[ManlyBread]

If such a small thing is enough to discourage women from entering the field, then by all means it should be done at this stage rather than after several years of college or in a workplace.

[aninhumer]

"If just one straw can break a camel's back it must have been a weak camel."

[gone35]

As a woman in (academic) CS, thank you. It is a small thing, but all those tiny slaps in the face do end up adding up at the end of the day...

[alistproducer2]

I hate to pile on the downvote-fest here but I don't understand how some people have come to a place where they believe the world would be a better place if used the correct pronouns. Good intentions, I'm sure, and your comment wasn't rude, but seriously stop telling people how to live their lives.

[the_other]

I fail to see how contributing to a downvote is "hating to pile on the downvote-fest".

To defend my point a little: I invited them to consider their use of language, not tell them how to live their life.

I can tell you how I came to this view: I read around through philosophy, pop-psychology/self-help, nlp, linguistics, religion and science-fiction; I spoke with feminists; I spoke with trans-folk and their admirers; I looked at my assumptions as a younger person and found them wrong.

[blowski]

I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think this was the post to say it. It is possible to over-egg even the most valid arguments.

[gugagore]

"Live their lives". Sounds like an exaggeration for something as inconsequential (as you suggest) as pronouns.

[deong]

This topic does bring out a fair amount people who get very upset over something they themselves claim is not worth worrying about.

[ManlyBread]

Am I being trolled?