#programming wisdom

[axolotl-on-rice]

”Data integration” oh they’re putting my man in the fucking computer aren’t they. I hate it here.

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

wAiT A mINuTE- why didn't the tardis translate the sign lenguage (in The Well) ??? i don't know with like, telepathy or something. a perception filter where aliss would see what they're saying. anything.

when we get a companion that speaks with sign language in 2078, what's the tardis gonna do?? nothing???

[up-the-anti]

any one got any undergrad college interview tips. holds out hat for offerings like a youthful industrial revolution era chimney sweeper

[wildglitch]

Today I made a terrible decision!

I've decided to dedicate this summer (At least my nights) to learning coding.

This is a bad idea, wish me luck.

[rickyisntwatching]

Choose Your Fighter

[layover-linux-official]

Write One to Throw Away?

If you're in the software industry for long enough, you'll hear this advice eventually. There's an infamous Catch-22 to writing code:

You don't deeply understand the problem (or its solution space) until you've written a solution.

The first solution you write will have none of that hindsight to help you.

So it naturally shakes out that you have to write it at least one time before you can write it well, unless you're stricken with exceptional luck. And the minimum number of attempts you will need is two: one to throw away, and a second attempt to keep.

It's just math. It's just logic. Write one to throw away. It's got the world's easiest proof. You'd have to be some kind of idiot to argue with it!

Okay, hear me out...

As you work on bigger and older projects, you will continuously be confronted with a real-world reality: that requirements are an input that never stops changing. You can make the right tool for the job today, but the job will change tomorrow. Is your pride and joy still the right tool?

If you're like most developers, your first stage of grief will be denial. Surely, if we just anticipate all the futures that could possibly happen, we can write code that's ready to be extended in any possible direction later! We're basically wizards, after all - this feels like it should work.

So you try it. You briefly feel safe in the corrosive sandstorm of time. Your code feels future proof, right up until the future arrives with a demand you didn't anticipate, which is actually so much harder to write thanks to your premature abstractions. Welcome to the anger stage. The YAGNI acronym (you ain't gonna need it) finally registers in your brain for what it is - a bitter pill, hard-won but true.

But we're wizards! We bargain with our interpreters and parsers and borrow checkers. Surely we can make our software immortal with the right burnt offerings. We can use TDD! Oops, now our tests are their own giant maintenance burden locking us into inflexible implementation decisions. Static analysis and refactoring tooling! Huh, well that made life support easier, but couldn't fix fundamental problems of approach, architecture and design (many of which only came into existence when the requirements changed).

As the sun rises and sets on entire ISAs, the cold gloom eventually sets in. There is no such thing as immortal software. Even the software that appears immortal is usually a vortex of continuous human labor and editing. The Linux kernel is constantly dying by pieces and being reborn in equal or greater measure - it feels great to get a patch merged, but your name might not be in the git blame at all in 2 years time.

I want to talk about what happens when your head suddenly jumps up in astonished clarity and you finally accept and embrace that fact: holy shit, there is no immortal software!

Silicon is sand

... and we're in the mandala business, baby.

I advocate that you write every copy to be thrown away. Every single one. I'm not kidding.

Maybe it'll be good enough (read adequacy, not perfection) that you never end up needing to replace your code in practice. Maybe you'll replace it every couple years as your traffic scales. But the only sure thing in life is that your code will have an expiration date, and every choice you make in acknowledgement of that mortality will make your life better.

People are often hesitant to throw out working code because it represents years of accumulated knowledge in real-world use. You'd have to be a fool to waste that knowledge, right? Okay. Do your comments actually instruct the reader about these lessons? Does secondary documentation explain why decisions were made, not just what those decisions were? Are you linking to an issue tracker (that's still accessible to your team)? If you're not answering yes to these type of questions, you have no knowledge in your code. It is a black hole that consumed and irreparably transformed knowledge for ten years. It is one of the worst liabilities you could possibly have. Don't be proud of that ship! You'll have nowhere to go when it sinks, and you'll go down with it.

When you write code with the future rewriter - not merely maintainer - in mind, you'll find it doesn't need to be replaced as often. That sounds ironic, and it is, but it's also true. Your code will be educational enough for onboarding new people (who would rewrite what they don't understand anyways). It will document its own assumptions (so you can tell when you need a full rewrite, or just something partial that feels more like a modification). It will provide a more useful guiding light for component size than any "do one thing well" handwave. And when the day finally comes, when a rewrite is truly necessary, you'll have all the knowledge you need to do it. In the meantime, you've given yourself permission to shit out something sloppy that might never need replacing, but will teach you a lot about the problem domain.

This is independent of things like test suite methodology, but it does provide a useful seive for thinking about which tests you do and don't want. The right tests will improve your mobility! The wrong tests will set your feet in cement. "Does this make a rewrite easier?" is a very good, very concrete heuristic for telling the two apart.

Sorry for long-posting, btw. I used this space to work through some hazy ideas and sharpen them for myself, particularly because I'm looking at getting into language design and implementation in the near future. Maybe at some future date, I'll rewrite it shorter and clearer.

TL,DR:

Every LOC you write will probably eventually be disposed or replaced. Optimize for that, and achieve Zen.

[venomousdread]

Intro post!! with a lil guy to help me out... :3

About me!

woah... all about me?

Hyperfixations/Interests!

just a few of them...

Rules/BYI

im new to tumblr so idk if this is formatted right or anything. im just a silly lil guy who likes sfw hypno and musical theatre and animation and other silly lil things

i want this to be a positive space!!! meaning keep all ur nasty nsfw icky goober bs away! same with endos/non traumagenic "systems"

i might add to this but for now can we just pls be silly lil guys? ty!

[kellymagovern]

In this clip, Osho was speaking to Veeresh Denny Yuson-Sánchez, a therapist and founder of Humaniversity. Veeresh asked Osho about three fears that continually came up in his therapy practice: 1) the fear of going crazy 2) the fear of letting go in sexual orgasm and 3) the fear of dying. These three fears kept coming up again and again among his clients and he asked Osho to comment about these fears. (Video taken from the longer talk: "The Last Testament" Vol. 2 Discourse 16) [x]

[novalunosis-system]

[PT: Choose 5 songs in your playlist and make a poll out of them:]

Tagging @starencrustedtinfoil and anyone else who wants to do it! No pressure; though!! /gen ❤️

[graff-aganda]

This may be a long shot but does anyone here know about free (or cheap) programs that will let you create text on a curved/round path? Think the sort of text you'd see going around the edge of a round pinback button.

I'm a Clip Studio Paint user so the text tool I have is pretty primitive 😔

[beatupoldpickuptruck]

Just in case you were wondering

Big city area where I live;

(All Numbers pulled off indeed)

Waitress @ Red Robin : $73k/yr + benefits and tips

Front Desk Secretary @ Bank : $54k/yr + benefits

Warehouse: $34k/yr - no benefits

And I know you're like what the fuck already but get this one;

Police officer; $28k/yr + benefits + douchebags

But get this, this is the real kicker;

Frontend (make buttons, sliders, menus) Programmer / Developer : $112k/yr + benefits

Ok the button guy makes as much as 4 cops - cool. So what, you all ask me, a beatupoldpickuptruck.

Here's some more jokes;

Director @ Trust Fund $85k/yr + benefits

Chief of Police @ (Precinct) $65k/yr + benefits

National Parks Service Ranger: $32k/yr no benefits

Backend (math, computation, everything not user facing in software) programmer / dev;

*drumroll*

$184,650/year + benefits + STOCK.

SO 👉👉 if you wanna *fight the bourgeois* or *overthrow the patriarchy* or get rich so you can buy your dream cottagecore tiny home, or buy a private island to build an entirely Wicca society, whatever you want

you should probably learn to code.

Specially since them daggum learning machines are getting so good at art and writing that sometimes you can't even tell the difference?

Only way to sieze control of the levers of power are to become the controllers of the sources of that power.

Wrench away the machines from the evil doers and capitalists

Let free your creativity on the canvas of virtual machines

Set yourself free, wielding knowledge as your sword.

Then no one can disarm you.

But that's just what this beatupoldpickuptruck thinks of things, don't pay me no mind, children.

[deargeeky-losers]

Top 3 epic the musical sagas and your favorite song from these sagas?

My favorite sagas may have to be Wisdom, Troy and Underworld. Kinda basic choices but those three have SUCH unskippable songs it's hard not to love them.

Onto my favorite song from each, for wisdom it would have to be We'll be fine (Little wolf is SUCH a close second), Troy would be Just a Man which is also one of my favorites overall and for the underworld saga this is kinda a hard pick but I have to go with no longer you 100%

Throwing in a honorable mention to the ocean saga because why not 🫶

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

me when to someone from a warm climate (uiscefhuaraithe)

[blorboresidue]

saw a post complaining about a glaze crawling and thought "well don't give up on the glaze at least try applying it thinner smh 🙄" and then remembered that there's a glaze I used once 3yrs ago and it crawled really badly and I never once used it again. LMAO toxic hypocrite hours for dothbrain.

so now I think I am going to try and use that glaze next term, out of spite (spite against myself).

[atomicfunnightmare]

'Never start a war with an enemy that can multiply infinitely. Or better yet, never start a war. Cosmic wisdom for you, you silly homos'

The Program Audio Series wisdom

[kellymagovern]