My Secret Life as a Spaghetti Coder
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I don't like to have too many microposts on this blog, so I've decided to save them up and start a Programming Quotables series. The idea is that I'll post quotes about programming that have one or more of the following attributes:
  1. I find funny
  2. I find asinine
  3. I find insightfully true
  4. And stand on their own, with little to no comment needed
Here's the fifth in that series. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

At this stage, if you've heard of Rails and you haven't converted, it's entirely possible that you never will. It's also entirely possible that anybody who still isn't even taking Rails seriously by this point might just be some kind of idiot.
...
Every programmer should also read Chad Fowler's "My Job Went To India" book, where he explains that as larger and larger numbers of programmers adopt a particular skill, that skill becomes more and more a commodity. Rails development becoming a commodity is really not in the economic interest of any Rails developer. This is especially the case because programming skill is very difficult to measure, which - according to the same economics which govern lemons and used-car markets - means that the average price of programmers in any given market is more a reflection of the worst programmers in that market than the best. An influx of programmers drives your rates down, and an influx of incompetent programmers drives your rates way the fuck down.
Giles Bowkett, Plato Says Knock You Out


Instead, I want to talk about my first attempt at solving the puzzle, which was an utter failure. A glorious, spectacular failure. Perhaps the single most impressive failure of my career. Failures are often much more interesting than successes, but for some unfathomable reason, people are often reluctant to discuss them.
Chris Okasaki, Spectacular Failure


And this is just the beginning of the ceremony:
Me: read file blah.txt and display it on system output
Java: How should I name the class?
Me: Test
Java: How should I handle errors?
Me: I don't care right now, I just need to display that data to system output
Java: But I need to know this, what if something unexpected happens?!
Me: I just want to make a prototype damn it!
Java: Sorry, can't do it.
Me: Ok, do nothing on error.
Java: And which implementation of Stream class should I use for reading?
Sebastjan Trepca, Java, Python and defaults


Everyone knows that diversification is the key to managing financial risk, but few people seem to apply this principal to their professional careers. Most developer shops are relatively limited when it comes to the number of technologies and problem domains they deal with. If you want to diversify your resume without job hopping every year, then it makes sense to actively seek out technology experiences that are different from the ones you use in your day job.


Neal Ford and others have been talking about the distinction between dynamic and static typing as being incorrect. The real question is between essence and ceremony. Java is a ceremonious language because it needs you to do several dances to the rain gods to declare even the simplest form of method. In an essential language you will say what you need to say, but nothing else. This is one of the reasons dynamic languages and type inferenced static languages sometimes look quite alike - it's the absence of ceremony that people react to.


Hey! Why don't you make your life easier and subscribe to the full post or short blurb RSS feed? I'm so confident you'll love my smelly pasta plate wisdom that I'm offering a no-strings-attached, lifetime money back guarantee!


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