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| author | Aki <please@ignore.pl> | 2024-09-01 14:56:39 +0200 |
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| committer | Aki <please@ignore.pl> | 2024-09-01 14:59:49 +0200 |
| commit | 4d671944caacc9c9a67c2fc3a17bdd76768c985d (patch) | |
| tree | cdf718c05e20a02160ec69631668f90eba4d151d /it_works_but_i_dont_know_why.html | |
| parent | 4329a929fdd8b071def3b5faf7d357cea61ea798 (diff) | |
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Published rant about programming jokes...
Yes, I wrote it hastily so that I can see how two entries on the same
day look like in the index. Yes, previously I always waited for the
next day before publishing another post.
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| -rw-r--r-- | it_works_but_i_dont_know_why.html | 46 |
1 files changed, 46 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/it_works_but_i_dont_know_why.html b/it_works_but_i_dont_know_why.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..872f8b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/it_works_but_i_dont_know_why.html @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +<!doctype html> +<html lang="en"> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> +<meta name="author" content="aki"> +<meta name="tags" content="blog, programming"> +<meta name="published-on" content="2024-09-01T14:56:39+02:00"> +<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="favicon.png"> +<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> + +<title>It Works, but I Don't Know Why</title> + +<header> +<nav><a href="https://ignore.pl">ignore.pl</a></nav> +<time>1 September 2024</time> +<h1>It Works, but I Don't Know Why</h1> +</header> + +<article> +<p>We had mostly clear sky for about four days now. Maybe a little cloud here or there. Because of it, I have severe +withdrawal symptoms from not yelling at clouds. It is time to preach pointless stuff on my blog.</p> +<img src="it_works_but_i_dont_know_why-1.png" alt="old man yells at cloud"> +<p>Among programming related jokes there is a certain subset centred around chaos. They usually contain references to +bad programming or communication practices, not knowing why observed behaviour occurs, nonsensical error messages, +improvised solutions, or similar things. The general notion can be described as "nobody actually knows what they are +doing here." +<p>A good chunk of them is funny. A cat walking on a keyboard resulting in a regular expression? Yeah, throw a typical +C++ type_traits meta-programming there while we are at it. A side-effect-driven behaviour resulting in unclear states? +A regular day with bad OOP. Problems communicating with non-technical staff? All of the original jokes have a good basis +in the real world. They are a result of humour and/or frustration. It's fun. +<p>Over last couple years I met an increasing number of students, newcomers, juniors, or even seniors that take these +jokes a bit too seriously. Although, it's an increase from 0-1 to maybe 2-3 per 40 or 50 people. It's a bit worrying. +Hopefully, I just got a bad roll on the population sample. +<p><em>Excellence is cool</em>. Making things work is amazing. The key to that is understanding what you are doing and +why. Copy-pasting things and "mutating" code until it compiles might be funny in a joke, but witnessing that at work is +tragic and infuriatingly painful to deal with. +<p>It's OK to make mistakes. It's fine to take time to understand things. Code rarely needs to be near perfect and very +often assumptions, unhandled cases, lack of modularization, and/or known failure conditions are acceptable. In some +cases we get more budget and time, in other cases we get stricter audits. In yet other cases we get a ticket straight to +hell. Nonetheless, every time I want to strive to make conscious and informed design and implementation decisions. Even +if that decision is "we won't do it." +<p>Will the code be "good"? Maybe. One thing is for sure: I will be able to explain why it was written that way. +<!-- And of course the "whys" are usually best documented. These are usually among the most meaningful notes. --> +<!-- See also: architectural decision records --> +</article> +<script src="https://stats.ignore.pl/track.js"></script> |