Comments on Armed Canadian: The Steam of Babbage

Oh, just a quick clarification: when I wrote tha...

2008-05-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

Oh, just a quick clarification: when I wrote that all the variables were named something like "000111" I didn't mean they were in binary, just that they were pretty much just numbers and perhaps a few letters. Like 012345, or perhaps t00013. I can't remember exactly how he described them, except that it was pretty much impossible to understand what each variable stood for.

This story usually preceded instructions to make variables easily understandable for easy maintenance later on, for example if you were creating a database for listing the guns in your collection, you'd have a variable called "gunModel" or "gunManu" for the make/model or manufacturer, rather than "x" or "y".

I was a CS major for a few years. I moved to mult...

2008-05-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was a CS major for a few years. I moved to multimedia studies (think CS-lite with a dash of art) because I discovered I simply wasn't detail oriented enough. That, and debugging gave me major heartburn.

However, the one thing I had drilled into my head during that time (and what I did learn fairly well) was compartmentalization of code (to prevent copy+pasting/repetition you were discussing) and writing it so that down the road if I or another programmer needed to maintain it, we'd understand what was going on.

Hell, even several years later, I can open my Java programs (most of which were various data structures, as that was the last hard programming class I took) and understand what I did and what I was doing, and I haven't programmed in anything more complicated than Lingo since then.

I think this was due to the fact that the professor who taught me this used to maintain code. One of the horror stories he told was when he was working at some kind of manufacturing plant, and he had to fix a bug in a code written a decade or two prior in FORTRAN. There were something on the order of a few hundred, or perhaps a thousand variables, and they were all something like "000111". He ended up shredding it and starting from scratch.

You write, "I can't pick up another language short...

2008-05-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

You write, "I can't pick up another language short of my life depending on it". May I suggest that you try Esperanto?

This planned language has some remarkable practical benefits. Personally, I've made friends around the world through Esperanto that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise. And then there's the Pasporta Servo , which provides free lodging and local information to Esperanto-speaking travellers in over 90 countries. In the past tear I have had guided tours of Berlin and Milan in the planned language. I have discussed philosophy with a Slovene poet, humour on television with a Bulgarian TV producer. I've discussed what life was like in East Berlin before the wall came down, how to cook perfect spaghetti, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, and so on. I recommend it, not just as an ideal but as a very practical way to overcome language barriers.

Take a look at www.esperanto.net

I run into the situation more often then not, wher...

2008-05-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

I run into the situation more often then not, where I am told to do something the wrong (read fastest) way because it will put a product in front of the customer faster. I usually complain at least, and throw a fit in extreme cases, but I'm not always in control of the architecture.

The same applies to legacy systems, (which I am currently working on.) When I started on this project, I told my boss, "I can re-write the entire thing in the same amount of time that it'll take to fix the old one." So I was asked to re-write it. And I did. But I wasn't allowed to rewrite the database portion because it would have taken an extra month or so in design time. So what I have is a modern, properly built application that sits on top of a barely-designed awful database. Also, the business rules in the legacy system are _incorrect_, yet I was asked to duplicate them because we don't have time redesign them right now.

The cool thing is that because of proper coding practices, a complete database and business logic redesign would only cause relatively minor complications for the application.

I find it takes a lot of smart on the developer's part to counter-act the stupidity of the management.

I always annoy other developers when I keep talkin...

2008-05-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

I always annoy other developers when I keep talking about maintaining an application while we're still designing it. I've been a maintenance developer, and I didn't much like it. That's one of the reasons why I work for a consulting company: we build it and the client maintains it.

And reading this post reminded me of how much you and I have in common: we're both armed, we're both foreigners in a strange land (you're from Canadia, I'm from Texas), we're both developers, both in the DC area. So I'll take this opportunity to say, "Howdy, neighbor!"

Heh. I wrote bits and pieces of my blog software (...

2008-05-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Heh. I wrote bits and pieces of my blog software (Subtext). But I've not kept up with it in over a year and don't take any credit any more.

However, back to your rant. I'm the "New Development" guy. Half because I'm amazing at doing what you say - seeing beyond the problem and then fixing it once - half because I throw fits over shitty processes.

Where I work (and we have multi PETABYTE sized databases), our main data entry system is still written in VB 6. The logic that checks the accuracy of the data entered tends to be written in the button_click event handler. This is why I don't work on legacy stuff.