Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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canis minor: May 4, 2011

idiotmeat posted:

I don't know what is with the folks that I work with but they are really afraid of removing dead code. For example (not real code):
code:
if A:
  if A or B:
    foo(
      Bar1,
      /* leaving a comment to let you know i deleted an argument go look at the diffs to figure out which one */
      Bar2)

  If not B and not A:
    doSomethingLongAndComplexWithBadCodeSmell()

My previous place was like that - what still haunts me to this day is the files that were not removed, because the idea of creating a new project was to copy an old one including all the files, including design versions, everything. Now - let's begin with a site where there's a horse graveyard, repeat copying a couple of times, and we end up on a site that sells handtowels, but has all the CSS classes for 5 projects that were done inbetween and all the files, including all the dead horses. Client asks - why is my site sending updates to registered users about dead horses? Because the database was not cleared out. :allears:

# ? Jun 26, 2017 23:52

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 20:26

JewKiller 3000: Nov 28, 2006; by Lowtax

Odette posted:

How do you feel about Rust, then?

at least they're trying. it'll probably be a good language in 15 years

Coffee Mugshot posted:

Is this guy calling Ken Thompson a retard? Asking for Rob Pike and Robert Griesemer.

ken no, but rob pike definitely yes

# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:41

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

quote:

The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they�re not researchers. They�re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They�re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:59

idiotmeat: Apr 3, 2010

canis minor posted:

My previous place was like that - what still haunts me to this day is the files that were not removed, because the idea of creating a new project was to copy an old one including all the files, including design versions, everything. Now - let's begin with a site where there's a horse graveyard, repeat copying a couple of times, and we end up on a site that sells handtowels, but has all the CSS classes for 5 projects that were done inbetween and all the files, including all the dead horses. Client asks - why is my site sending updates to registered users about dead horses? Because the database was not cleared out.

I just came across several headers whose structures are commented out with a comment that the struct was redefined in 3 other locations. In one of those files all of the contents were deleted except for a small set of instructions on how to use one of the other 2 headers instead.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:49

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

JewKiller 3000 posted:

go is the donald trump of programming languages: someday everyone is going to simultaneously realize that it's garbage, and the retards who went along with it will lose all respect

There was a great example posted on hnews a few days ago:

You know how PostgREST is a really cool project that automatically generates a REST API for any Postgres database (effectively making a lot of dumb web service applications redundant)? And perhaps you know it's been around for a few years, it's actively maintained, feature-rich, stable, and performant?

Well, yeah, that's all cool and good, but PostgREST is written in an obscure hipster language such as Haskell. Would you ever use a program written in a language you don't know? We should obviously rewrite it in Go!

Literally. That's the entire reason behind the project.

https://github.com/nuveo/prest posted:

Problem
There is the PostgREST written in haskell, keep a haskell software in production is not easy job, with this need that was born the pREST.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14620990 posted:

Working with Haskell is not easy, finding Haskell developer is even worse. So we created the project.

https://github.com/nuveo/prest/issues/41 posted:

The reason the pREST was born was because of a lack of developer, I am using pREST in my company, I know haskell and my developers nothing, if you have any problem (in production) just sits in my hand (hand want that).

"I hire developers who are too dumb to learn another language. Also, I need to constantly make so many changes to this tool I use that it somehow takes me less time to completely rewrite it in a simpler language."

Ok, that's a bit unfair. I'm sure he had real and substantial production issues with PostgREST and wasn't just looking for an excu...

Github profile posted:

Founder at @nuveo, Gopher evangelist

Oooook.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 07:16

Mr Shiny Pants: Nov 12, 2012

That is some nice software, I did not know that existed.

Discoverability is a thing now.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 10:17

N.Z.'s Champion: Jun 8, 2003; Yam Slacker

I have a coworker who regularly invents tags. So far he's come up with <space> (not a tribute to the <spacer> tag of Netscape 4, he meant <span>), and <unrline> which I guess is underline... oh and <lmon> but I don't know what that was. The tags are always closed correctly so he or his IDE spells it correctly twice.

His classNames are really weird too... like <img class="logo-highlight highlight-logo"> and those classes had very different properties.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 10:21

redleader: Aug 18, 2005; Engage according to operational parameters

How is PostgREST not a horror in itself? Exposing a database as a web server directly to the internet seems like a total shitshow.

I recently learned that MS SQL Server had, for a brief window, a very similar feature that allowed you to expose the DB server as a SOAP endpoint. This was only a thing in SQL Server 2005 (maybe also 2000?). I don't know the official reason for its removal, but I'm guessing it gave a bunch of security guys and compliance auditors aneurysms.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 10:21

Mr Shiny Pants: Nov 12, 2012

redleader posted:

How is PostgREST not a horror in itself? Exposing a database as a web server directly to the internet seems like a total shitshow.

I recently learned that MS SQL Server had, for a brief window, a very similar feature that allowed you to expose the DB server as a SOAP endpoint. This was only a thing in SQL Server 2005 (maybe also 2000?). I don't know the official reason for its removal, but I'm guessing it gave a bunch of security guys and compliance auditors aneurysms.

Because if you do it well it is not different from a regular CRUD app? The problem being the "doing it well". They do say you need safeguards and to put nGinx in front of it. So it is not just plunking the port open and off you go.
So why not? Oracle APEX is the same.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 10:27

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

NihilCredo posted:

There was a great example posted on hnews a few days ago:

You know how PostgREST is a really cool project that automatically generates a REST API for any Postgres database (effectively making a lot of dumb web service applications redundant)? And perhaps you know it's been around for a few years, it's actively maintained, feature-rich, stable, and performant?

Well, yeah, that's all cool and good, but PostgREST is written in an obscure hipster language such as Haskell. Would you ever use a program written in a language you don't know? We should obviously rewrite it in Go!

Literally. That's the entire reason behind the project.

"I hire developers who are too dumb to learn another language. Also, I need to constantly make so many changes to this tool I use that it somehow takes me less time to completely rewrite it in a simpler language."

Ok, that's a bit unfair. I'm sure he had real and substantial production issues with PostgREST and wasn't just looking for an excu...

Oooook.

You're the author of this, aren't you?

# ? Jun 27, 2017 11:03

SupSuper: Apr 8, 2009; At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

redleader posted:

How is PostgREST not a horror in itself? Exposing a database as a web server directly to the internet seems like a total shitshow.

I recently learned that MS SQL Server had, for a brief window, a very similar feature that allowed you to expose the DB server as a SOAP endpoint. This was only a thing in SQL Server 2005 (maybe also 2000?). I don't know the official reason for its removal, but I'm guessing it gave a bunch of security guys and compliance auditors aneurysms.

If you're working with a remote database, it's better to only expose an API to the database rather than the database itself. Security concerns apply either way.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 11:04

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Dongsturm posted:

You're the author of this, aren't you?

I don't know either Haskell or Go (but would loving suck it up and learn either if critical to my company).

# ? Jun 27, 2017 12:10

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

NihilCredo posted:

I don't know either Haskell or Go (but would loving suck it up and learn either if critical to my company).

Go is a trivial language to learn for anyone. Haskell ... let's just say is has a bit steeper learning curve. Not insurmountable, of course, if you put your mind to it, but you need to want to put your mind to it.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 12:16

Beef: Jul 26, 2004

I doubt that rewriting will somehow be less complex than learning haskell.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 12:32

Coffee Mugshot: Jun 26, 2010; by Lowtax

Before you post a rant about Haskell and Go it seems like it would be nice to know either. Even knowing Haskell, if someone suggested that we must use it (especially for a db driver), I'd probably argue for quite a while about using C or C++ instead. Not really sure why that guy is so excited about writing it in Go but w/e.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 15:03

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

Coffee Mugshot posted:

Before you post a rant about Haskell and Go it seems like it would be nice to know either. Even knowing Haskell, if someone suggested that we must use it (especially for a db driver), I'd probably argue for quite a while about using C or C++ instead. Not really sure why that guy is so excited about writing it in Go but w/e.

Why you should choose C for a project:

- The speed of the program.
- Don't want to write ASM.

That's it.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 15:05

Coffee Mugshot: Jun 26, 2010; by Lowtax

Is it possible to summon the goon who wrote "Learn You a Haskell For Great Good" here to dispel these false notions of Haskell?

# ? Jun 27, 2017 15:07

Coffee Mugshot: Jun 26, 2010; by Lowtax

ratbert90 posted:

Why you should choose C for a project:

- The speed of the program.
- Don't want to write ASM.

That's it.

Sounds the basic criteria for a lot projects, but thanks.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 15:08

gonadic io: Feb 16, 2011; >>=

Coffee Mugshot posted:

Is it possible to summon the goon who wrote "Learn You a Haskell For Great Good" here to dispel these false notions of Haskell?

You're thinking of Erlang, afaik the author of Learn You A Haskell is not a goon.

And I'm not sure what there is to be dispelling here: Haskell does have a steeper learning curve than most languages. Source: I have spent a few years as a lab assistant (read: coursework marker and stupid-problem solver) for Haskell-for-undergrads modules at uni.
I'd be interested to know why this person tool on the sole responsibility of development of this open-source tool, certainly I wouldn't rewrite it.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 17:18

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

gonadic io posted:

You're thinking of Erlang, afaik the author of Learn You A Haskell is not a goon.

The author is a goon named BONUS. Or maybe B.O.N.U.S. Anyway let me stand in and tell you Haskell's had some breakage in the past years or so, where code that worked in 2010 doesn't work today because libraries got rejiggered. And the community's full of lame poo poo like implementing something akin to SOAP in the type system, which totally sucks to use and could be done a thousand times better in a language like D, or doing trivial stuff with monoids, and then writing papers about it.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 22:20

Beef: Jul 26, 2004

sarehu posted:

[...] or doing trivial stuff with monoids, and then writing papers about it.

And using said papers as documentation for their library.

I only attended ICFP once, but I still remember a complete main conference paper dedicated to creating a red/black tree type (actually as illustration for dependent types in Haskell).

edit: found it! https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sweirich/talks/icfp14.pdf

Beef fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jun 27, 2017

# ? Jun 27, 2017 23:05

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

NihilCredo posted:

There was a great example posted on hnews a few days ago:

You know how PostgREST is a really cool project that automatically generates a REST API for any Postgres database (effectively making a lot of dumb web service applications redundant)? And perhaps you know it's been around for a few years, it's actively maintained, feature-rich, stable, and performant?

Well, yeah, that's all cool and good, but PostgREST is written in an obscure hipster language such as Haskell. Would you ever use a program written in a language you don't know? We should obviously rewrite it in Go!

Literally. That's the entire reason behind the project.

"I hire developers who are too dumb to learn another language. Also, I need to constantly make so many changes to this tool I use that it somehow takes me less time to completely rewrite it in a simpler language."

Ok, that's a bit unfair. I'm sure he had real and substantial production issues with PostgREST and wasn't just looking for an excu...

Oooook.

People need a project related to a technology they like to put on their resume so they'll get hired for a <insert tech here> job. That's the impetus behind all this - put something, anything on Github, and employers will be wowed. Supposedly.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 23:08

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Pollyanna posted:

People need a project related to a technology they like to put on their resume so they'll get hired for a <insert tech here> job. That's the impetus behind all this - put something, anything on Github, and employers will be wowed. Supposedly.

Employers don't care about your pet projects though.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 23:26

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

leper khan posted:

Employers don't care about your pet projects though.

They don't care what you did, but they care that you did it, and got a keyword on your resume out of it.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 23:43

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

Pollyanna posted:

People need a project related to a technology they like to put on their resume so they'll get hired for a <insert tech here> job. That's the impetus behind all this - put something, anything on Github, and employers will be wowed. Supposedly.

He's the CTO of a startup. A developer job where the technology on his resume matters would be a huge step backwards for him in his career.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 00:14

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

leper khan posted:

Employers don't care about your pet projects though.

This is the exact opposite of the usual advice in the job threads here and elsewhere.

Not that they care what you did, only that you've demonstrated the ability to do things.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 00:38

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Plorkyeran posted:

He's the CTO of a startup. A developer job where the technology on his resume matters would be a huge step backwards for him in his career.

I've been the CTO of a startup. All that meant is that we had all of two employees, and only one could be CEO. This is part of why you don't pay much attention to titles.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 01:22

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

If you're designating officers and you're not a large and/or publicly-traded company, you might as well be serving imaginary tea to unicorns at a fuckin tea party because it's all just a high stakes game of make-believe, and everyone will look at you and laugh when they realize it.

Designating yourself "CEO" of a company with two employees is so insufferable I can't even believe anyone old enough to legally act as the director of a company would even consider it.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 04:47

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

PT6A posted:

If you're designating officers and you're not a large and/or publicly-traded company, you might as well be serving imaginary tea to unicorns at a fuckin tea party because it's all just a high stakes game of make-believe, and everyone will look at you and laugh when they realize it.

Designating yourself "CEO" of a company with two employees is so insufferable I can't even believe anyone old enough to legally act as the director of a company would even consider it.

Any c-corp, even if it employs one person, has to have a president, a treasurer, and a secretary, although usually they can be the same person. :shrug:

# ? Jun 28, 2017 04:57

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

PT6A posted:

Designating yourself "CEO" of a company with two employees is so insufferable I can't even believe anyone old enough to legally act as the director of a company would even consider it.

When you're dealing with anybody, it's the quickest and simplest way to tell people that you're the guy in charge. It's the normal thing to do, and people used to startups and small companies and such don't pick up any "I'm pretending to be a fat-cat" vibe that you feel.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 07:19

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

If you're working on a business deal with someone and you introduce yourself as anything other than the CEO then they will generally end up asking to talk to the CEO before agreeing to the deal. Here in startuplandia a two-person company having a CEO and a CTO is completely normal and if you don't have them then you're just being needlessly weird and confusing by not using the standard terms.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 07:48

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

None of this means that it's less pretentious or stupid to have a CEO in your 2-person company, it just means that startuplandia and tech culture in general is terrible and worthy of ridicule. Being normal in tech culture is not actually a good thing

# ? Jun 28, 2017 08:08

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

QuarkJets posted:

None of this means that it's less pretentious or stupid to have a CEO in your 2-person company, it just means that startuplandia and tech culture in general is terrible and worthy of ridicule. Being normal in tech culture is not actually a good thing

Someone should make a tv show about this

# ? Jun 28, 2017 08:18

Odette: Mar 19, 2011

The Fool posted:

Someone should make a tv show about this

Silicon Valley doesn't count? :v:

# ? Jun 28, 2017 08:35

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Odette posted:

Silicon Valley doesn't count?

# ? Jun 28, 2017 09:09

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

QuarkJets posted:

None of this means that it's less pretentious or stupid to have a CEO in your 2-person company, it just means that startuplandia and tech culture in general is terrible and worthy of ridicule. Being normal in tech culture is not actually a good thing

Sounds like you just wanna live your life getting mad about stuff for no reason.

# ? Jun 28, 2017 19:58

Dylan16807: May 12, 2010

QuarkJets posted:

None of this means that it's less pretentious or stupid to have a CEO in your 2-person company, it just means that startuplandia and tech culture in general is terrible and worthy of ridicule. Being normal in tech culture is not actually a good thing

There's nothing inherently pretentious about a term meaning "person in charge of the company."

# ? Jun 29, 2017 00:06

Snak: Oct 10, 2005; I myself will carry you to the Gates of Valhalla...
You will ride eternal,
shiny and chrome.; Grimey Drawer

Like, are small companies not suppose to have legal leadership?

What would be an appropriate title for the person in charge of a 2-3 person company? That's not pretension but would be suitable to appear on legal documents?

If the company gets bigger, does that person's title change to CEO?

# ? Jun 29, 2017 00:22

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Snak posted:

Like, are small companies not suppose to have legal leadership?

What would be an appropriate title for the person in charge of a 2-3 person company? That's not pretension but would be suitable to appear on legal documents?

If the company gets bigger, does that person's title change to CEO?

Afaik, owner, president, CEO are your options.

Which one is appropriate is totally dependent on your company's legal status. (Sole-proprietor, s-corp, llc, etc)

Silly opinions about pretension are irrelevant.

# ? Jun 29, 2017 00:27

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 20:26

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Just because someone says they have a startup doesn't mean they actually have a legal organization or are even anything beyond a college kid talking big.

# ? Jun 29, 2017 02:13

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