Smart people often write the worst code because they're more comfortable with complexity and have larger working memory. I've encountered this so many times in my career
Don't write ✍️ code for the smart people. Assume the person looking at it cannot fit complexity in their head
Almost every person who reads How to Win Friends and Influence People internalizes only one thing (“repeat the persons name”) and not the most important thing (“become genuinely interested in others”).
the thing about boots theory is that we're converging on a phase of capitalism where you kind of can't buy good stuff that lasts even if you can afford it, because there is simply no reason for any company to sell you something once that they could sell you 100 times
Gonna have a really unpopular opinion, but this "my wife is great" thing feels like dudes talking about us like accessories to their tech influencer cereers.
The most effective software engineers I know always had a tendency to revert to writing "C" style code.
Nothing seems to come close in terms of readability / maintainability.
It is hard to overstate how strong the push for object-oriented programming was. It even bled out into other fields like education (look up "learning objects"). You had to organize your programming projects into hierarchical classes and you would be ridiculed if you did not. Java and C# are a reflection of this era. It took 25 years for the obsession to die down. Basically, the gurus had to be given time to retire.
Object-oriented programming can work… but there are serious pitfalls that will make your projects harder to maintain and optimize. Deep inheritance is almost always a disaster.
The lesson is: don’t blindly embrace the latest things even if everyone is. Masses will lead you astray. Be critical.
For all the product teams out there:
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“The biggest lesson I got from software engineering is this:
Resist the urge to do something before having a plan.
Code written recklessly will almost always fail and frustrate you.
Grab a pen and paper.
Solve the problem.
Then you may use the keyboard.”
– @OneJKMolina
“A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does."
Russell Ackof
@johncutlefish I prefer “cohesion over consistency”. Alignment can drift to consistency which drifts towards everyone “doing it the same”.
Cohesion lends itself to asking “does this make sense?” Which is a much better question than “are we aligned” imho 🤷
The ideal long term solution often looks different than the feasible tactical solution right now. When people wonder what engineers do all day if they aren't working on visible changes, they are trying to connect the dots from tactical solutions to the more ideal ones.
one of the biggest reasons i see people fail in becoming software engineers:
maturity
the ability to say no to the things you want to do and yes to the things you need to do