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So, this has been a mild rant in my head, and I feel like I need to articulate it somewhat.
Recently, I was out drinking with some developers, and I got talking about some pattern that some framework uses that another developer considered harmful1. To be honest, I didn't have a strong opinion on it, I just liked to use it on occasion when I was working with that framework a few years ago. However, the other developers argument against it is what I'll call an Appeal To Personality.
In this particular case, it went something like this, "I worked with the smartest programming guy ever, and he was really anal, and really obsessive, but he produced great quality code, and he said not to do X", with the implicit followup that I'm not going to claim I'm better than this guy I've not met, or otherwise challenge the authority of this Personality.
Similarly, when having a discussion about Agile, one of the developer said to another (who claimed Agile didn't work), "This was put together by some Very Smart People, and they found it worked. Who are you to argue with them?"
I have 3 words for this style of argument: Bull fucking shit.
My own personal take on this is simply that programming isn't a religion, there aren't the gods from on high, there aren't high priestess, priests or Great Rites that confer upon us the wisdom of the gods, and these great Personality Deities. Maybe it's just my own mental blocks, but I need a Reasontm to accept this. I need to understand why something is a bad idea.
Here's a list of things I know to be a bad idea:
It's not a whole load of stuff, really. They're just mistakes I made for myself, and that I've learned from. I learned a lot from mistakes I made. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've learned the most from mistakes I've made for myself.
Maybe it's a mental block that I can't accept wisdom from others without the memory of pain to back it up, or it's that I can't accept a good practice without a similarly good reason, but an appeal to personality is just not a good enough reason for me.
That said, there are Personalities that I will listen to. I have a few colleagues like that. One even gave a presentation on refactoring. He worked through an example from a book he was very fond of. So, you might be asking, how does this differ from the "Appeal to Personality" that I've just been wittering on about?
Well, in this guy's case, he didn't just rework an example application, following what was in the book, but he took the time to explain what he was doing. Moreover, he wasn't just explaining what was in the book, he was explaining his interpretation of what he'd learned in the book. He'd learned something, distilled it, and shared this knowledge with us. His personality lent a lot to the process, but he wasn't the reason. He didn't say, "I'm pulling out the code and putting it here Because I Say So", or saying, "Whenever you see this, this is a Code Smell and it must be moved", but took the time to explain why he was doing it. These reasons mean a lot.
I'd much rather hear someone who has lived through some pain share tales and stories of their pain, and reasons why they do what they do. I'd much rather have a good reason to do something, and because I'm told to by a Personality is not it. I don't care if Denis Ritchie said it, Linus Torvalds, or some super-smart guy in the back-ass of nowhere said it. I want good reasons, not the celebrity.
( Herein lie the footnotes )
Recently, I was out drinking with some developers, and I got talking about some pattern that some framework uses that another developer considered harmful1. To be honest, I didn't have a strong opinion on it, I just liked to use it on occasion when I was working with that framework a few years ago. However, the other developers argument against it is what I'll call an Appeal To Personality.
In this particular case, it went something like this, "I worked with the smartest programming guy ever, and he was really anal, and really obsessive, but he produced great quality code, and he said not to do X", with the implicit followup that I'm not going to claim I'm better than this guy I've not met, or otherwise challenge the authority of this Personality.
Similarly, when having a discussion about Agile, one of the developer said to another (who claimed Agile didn't work), "This was put together by some Very Smart People, and they found it worked. Who are you to argue with them?"
I have 3 words for this style of argument: Bull fucking shit.
My own personal take on this is simply that programming isn't a religion, there aren't the gods from on high, there aren't high priestess, priests or Great Rites that confer upon us the wisdom of the gods, and these great Personality Deities. Maybe it's just my own mental blocks, but I need a Reasontm to accept this. I need to understand why something is a bad idea.
Here's a list of things I know to be a bad idea:
- Programming in really complicated Regular Expressions - I've done this before. I've had to debug some very complicated Regular Exression. As time went on, I spent less time fixing the broken big regex, and either reducing them to small ones in multiple phases, or just taking out the need for them altogether, because that was easier for me to debug
- Similarly in python, I try not to use nested loop comprehensions. Yes, you can look smart and cool, but I don't do them. I can, but I won't because I've learned from regexes that just because you can do something is not a reason for doing it.
- Operator overloading is cool, but unless the semantics fit what you're trying to do, you're just going to confuse yourself when you go back to it later
- Don't write a one-liner just for the sake of writing a one-liner if you expect to rely on that code. If it fits more naturally in multiple lines, do that instead.2
It's not a whole load of stuff, really. They're just mistakes I made for myself, and that I've learned from. I learned a lot from mistakes I made. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've learned the most from mistakes I've made for myself.
Maybe it's a mental block that I can't accept wisdom from others without the memory of pain to back it up, or it's that I can't accept a good practice without a similarly good reason, but an appeal to personality is just not a good enough reason for me.
That said, there are Personalities that I will listen to. I have a few colleagues like that. One even gave a presentation on refactoring. He worked through an example from a book he was very fond of. So, you might be asking, how does this differ from the "Appeal to Personality" that I've just been wittering on about?
Well, in this guy's case, he didn't just rework an example application, following what was in the book, but he took the time to explain what he was doing. Moreover, he wasn't just explaining what was in the book, he was explaining his interpretation of what he'd learned in the book. He'd learned something, distilled it, and shared this knowledge with us. His personality lent a lot to the process, but he wasn't the reason. He didn't say, "I'm pulling out the code and putting it here Because I Say So", or saying, "Whenever you see this, this is a Code Smell and it must be moved", but took the time to explain why he was doing it. These reasons mean a lot.
I'd much rather hear someone who has lived through some pain share tales and stories of their pain, and reasons why they do what they do. I'd much rather have a good reason to do something, and because I'm told to by a Personality is not it. I don't care if Denis Ritchie said it, Linus Torvalds, or some super-smart guy in the back-ass of nowhere said it. I want good reasons, not the celebrity.
( Herein lie the footnotes )
