The hardest part about programming is...

Resisting the urge to rewrite coworkers code even though it does actually work.

Resisting pressure to 'just get it done' and making sure it gets done to a decent standard.

Handing your job over to India.

12 hours ago, earnshaw wrote

Without using a OUIJA board, trying to divine your predecessor's intent when he wrote that glop.  Also, trying not to become violently ill when confronted with what passes for "documentation."

For the most part, programmers write poor documentation. Do you think having Microsoft provide a certification for documentation, would improve the situation?

-Josh

@Bass: --

This is usually a symptom for me of developers re-inventing the wheel. If a library exists that does what you want, re-use it. I come across far to many developers that want to write everything themselves, all because they don't want to have to learn how someone else solved a particular problem

@DeathByVisualStudio: This is an absolutely brilliant observation and deduction. It is 100% accurate and factual/

5 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

@Bass: --

This is usually a symptom for me of developers re-inventing the wheel. If a library exists that does what you want, re-use it. I come across far to many developers that want to write everything themselves, all because they don't want to have to learn how someone else solved a particular problem

At times I've re-written something that was already developed, but because I understood how they solved the problem, I just thought it was done in a really horrible clumsy way.

@ScanIAm: I think these two posts are coupled i.e. Scans and Deaths's, and presents one of my biggest irritations in multi team development.

The truth is that the clever folls are usually not that clever. I see this constantly where some highly qualified and educated developer opts to always take the complicated route, simply because solving problems the simple way is something they cannot do. It is now why I almost always insist on having graduates and prospective developers write code as part of the application process. If I could I would have an apprectice style recruitment process nd hire people after seeing them solve several stories. The best qualified developers are sometimes guilty of creating the most abstruce code bases

I think the hardest thing about programming is in trying to keep things as simple as possible by writing for everyone and not yourself.

@brian.shapiro: That is a necessity sometimes, I do it myself. The issue for me only arises when you re-write everything all the time as that is not very agile.

Technical debt is a real problem in Agile development, and refactoring is a must. As Dr Herbie intimated, it a matter of negatiing that need to rewite just for the sake of a re-write.

Sometimes, I think that the problem has to do with bored developers.  If you have (or think you have) the skills to write more complicated code, but what you are assigned is mind-numbingly  boring, then tarting it up with some unneeded patterns is a way to keep the work interesting.

I've found, though, that it's a bigger challenge to take complicated code or business rules and make them as simple and clear as possible.  Every bit of scaffolding you can remove makes the app smaller, faster, and easier to improve upon later when you actually do need the clever bits.

6 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

@Bass: --

This is usually a symptom for me of developers re-inventing the wheel. If a library exists that does what you want, re-use it. I come across far to many developers that want to write everything themselves, all because they don't want to have to learn how someone else solved a particular problem

Not all code out there is worthy of [re]use.

@Charles: When is the last time you had a problem and solved it by writing a program? Did you ever work on any of those Project Euler problems?

-Josh

1 day ago, ScanIAm wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio:

*snip*

Oh, and another 'hardest part' is coming in to a project after a number of 'clever' folks have had their way with the design and chose not to document what that design was.  Spending a few months feeling like an idiot while you try to wrap  your brain around their 'clever' coding is a giant suckfest.

OMFG! This is the story of my life right now to a T. "Self documenting code" -- now there's a joke.

Hardest thing about programming, is not the programming,..

It's talking to other people (managers) about programming. It's like trying to learn a donkey how to ride a bike.

There are some problems around the business of doing software development: code quality vs deadlines - balancing cost/benefit (or more dangerous: cost/risk); explaining issues to managers and customers of varying technical proficiency; dealing with last-minute requirements (can we test this in time? - again risk); calling into problematic code (opening up a can of worms: "if I call this function, I'll have to solve these problems in its implementation - and it already has these dependencies and I need to ship this within this amount of time..."); ...

Then some technical problems: dealing with obsolete modules and programming models; dealing with unstructured/non-modular/monolithic undocumented code ("ok" for code to be unstructured and documented or structured and un-documented, but not both); promoting quality code with an outdated tool chain (often can't use .NET and VS).

Coding thru command line using vim in school. No intellsense, no compile/dubug button. No mouse. No easy copy and paste.

@magicalclick: yikes!