Other Do you want to learn 12 or just 8 programming languages next year?

[blackbird9]

The worst things happen when you force somebody to add comments who is just not suitable to imagine what other people need for comments.

Or you write some complicated library, don't document it yourself... and get the people who have tried to use it to document it, because you're "too busy"...

 

[bgavin]

Many years ago, my learned friend was forced to deliver his Turbo Pascal source code to a client.
He changed all the variable and procedure names to Latin.

The compiler didn't care.

 

[blackbird9]

I would have used Klingon.

 

[Crivens]

"It wasn't being compiled so we got rid of it as part of the cleanup".

That's when people suddenly find a ticket assigned to them "well done, now go to the VCS and dig it out again..."

I switched to have debug and checking code enclosed in an if(debug) {} or if(validate){} with these being "static const bool" in some common header.

The code will be removed by dead code elimination, but is still checked. And the barrier for removal is higher.

 

[RetroComputingCollector]

I focus on knowing a few things fluently, instead of "knowing" many things badly. Of course with the rise of A"I", people think that asking ChatGPT for something is the equivalent of knowing it. The only things dumber in terms of intelligence than computer programs with illusions of a mind are the AI bros that promote LLMs as the solution to everything.

 

[bakul]

I always wondered if guys like that really write the code that way for their own consumption. Or whether they have their own private version with proper readable names so they know what's going on, and a sed script they run over it to replace those readable names with 's', 'f', 'fx', 'a', 'aa', etc before they show the code to anyone else.. . There used to be commercial source code obfuscators you could buy that would try to make your code unreadable by changing all the variable and function names etc. Yeah, I guess I'm just a cynic, surely he wouldn't do something like that, no, the guy must be a genius...

There is some history behind this: https://www.jsoftware.com/ioj/iojATW.htm - Whitney does indeed write for himself. He implemented his "k" array programming language from scratch at least 5 times (each somewhat different but he built a very successful company around them). k has been my favorite array programming language.

From https://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320 :

Someone asked about the code base. “Currently it’s 247 lines of C.” Some expressions of incredulity. Whitney displayed the source, divided between five text files so each would fit entirely on his monitor. “Hate scrolling,” he mumbled.