[HN Gopher] Mastering Programming - by Kent Beck (2016)
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Mastering Programming - by Kent Beck (2016)
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 173 points
Date : 2024-02-13 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tidyfirst.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tidyfirst.substack.com)
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I think an expert knows this.
|
| and
|
| For A new, non-expert, these suggestions might be too generic,
| too high level, broad. They wont grasp the point.
| wildknocker wrote:
| Even if the suggestions are a bit too generic, they might click
| for someone some time after they've read it. It also helps
| validate some things that less experienced programmers might be
| doing but aren't sure are the best things. I for example found
| that some things I seem to be gravitating towards are
| mentioned, which will hopefully allow me to focus on them and
| grasp them better in the future.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I might be, being miss-interpreted as dismissing this
| article.
|
| They are definitely good points, and doesn't hurt to read
| them.
|
| I think all the points are valid.
|
| Maybe I was just contemplating how experts sometimes
| 'summarize' their knowledge, condense it, but in the process
| of trying to be succinct, becomes itself un-fathomable,
| generic.
| ta2112 wrote:
| Looks right. Read it and transcend journeyman programmers!
| hnben wrote:
| I am always amazed at how some people can put very complex
| concepts into very simple words. It's an art that is often
| undervalued.
| ioblomov wrote:
| To switch contexts for a moment, let me suggest the French
| epigrammatist who influenced Nietzsche...
|
| https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/th...
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I was ready to crap all over this--I've seen so many of these
| kind of posts--but this was (IMHO) quite good. There's a ton of
| (as the kids say) alpha in each of the bullet points.
|
| I can't say that I practice all or most of these habits, but the
| points about "calling your shots" and "concrete hypotheses"
| resonate. For example, when I add a debugging printf/log, I
| always ask myself, "will this output invalidate one or more
| hypotheses?" If not, then I need to rethink the problem.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _There 's a ton of (as the kids say) alpha in each of the
| bullet points._
|
| Come on, I know I'm about to hit 40, but slang can't be
| evolving _that_ fast! How am I supposed to be keeping up with
| all the kids?
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Don't ask me! I don't have enough rizz to get included in
| those circles.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I generally don't meta comment, but a bit surprising to me that
| the bulk of this discussion has been flagged dead. I think the
| discussion and criticisms there were valid.
| jdlshore wrote:
| If you have enough karma, you can "vouch" a dead comment back
| to life by clicking the timestamp.
|
| At the time of these writing, only one comment was dead, and it
| was rude and content-free. The rest of its tree was arguing
| about Beck in general rather than the article, so everything's
| working as intended IMO.
| dsissitka wrote:
| If you like this you might like the book:
|
| https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tidy-first/978109815123...
|
| Previous discussion:
|
| _How I came to write "Tidy First?" tl;dr it took 18 years_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35246995
|
| _Tidy First?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942400
| bsder wrote:
| Your regular reminder that Kent Beck was part of the Extreme
| Programming brain trust behind the massive failure that was the
| Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...
|
| Programming advice from him and his cohorts (Ron Jeffries and
| Martin Fowler) should be regarded with several large grains of
| salt.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I haven't heard of C3 before, but I'm a big fan of reading
| about software project failures, and I'm not a fan of every
| aspect of XP, so I was certainly curious about this.
|
| That said, the Wikipedia page neither supports nor refutes your
| assertion, and Fowler himself discusses C3's failure here:
| https://martinfowler.com/bliki/C3.html
|
| Fowler refers to notes that don't seem to be in the Wikipedia
| entry any more: "In particular the entry in Wikipedia is
| misleading and incomplete, much of its comments seem to be
| based on a paper from a determined XP critic whose sources are
| unclear. Certainly its comments on performance are a misleading
| interpretation of material in my Refactoring book."
|
| Do you have any other links to this project? The fact that it
| went live and then reverted to the COBOL version is
| interesting.
| whstl wrote:
| There is some discussion in C2 by the people involved about
| whether it was a failure or not:
| http://wiki.c2.com/?HighDisciplineMethodology
|
| I believe the characterization of C3 as a "failure" is
| because it wasn't able to deliver the goal (goal was paying
| 87000 people - it only reached about 9000), and was later
| discontinued for multiple reasons (some unrelated, like
| people leaving, the merger with Daimler). The claim that "XP
| was banned" there seems overblown, it seems it's just that
| "people at DaimlerChrysler stopped taking terms like
| Smalltalk, OOP and XP" (per link above).
| bsder wrote:
| C3 was, by _any_ measure, an abject failure. It got only
| the very basics working and then died when it ran into the
| vast number of unspecified exceptional cases (gee, where
| have we heard that before ...) that needed to be handled.
| And then got cancelled and completely reverted.
|
| To then use such a failure as a marquee project
| demonstrating the supposed "superiority" of XP is unabashed
| chutzpah.
|
| Now, large IT projects _generally_ fail. So, XP is not
| wholly to blame.
|
| However, the proponents of XP pushed it as superior silver
| bullet to navigate both the political and technical waters
| of software projects. The fact that C3 was such a
| spectacular failure simply demonstrates that XP really
| wasn't any different than any other methodology being
| pushed by people with an agenda.
| bsder wrote:
| I suspect I have some cached references, but I would have to
| go dig a presentation out of my backups.
|
| Unfortunately, all parties involved in the C3 project would
| rather that it be forgotten. As such, it seems that it is
| going down the memory hole even faster than most Internet
| things. :(
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