I’m surely the worst programmer ❤️
I think I’m an decent programmer as measured by these values. Having no real training/education, I often doubt my abilities.
On the flip side I work with people who have been doing it for 20+ years and are “bad” programmers.
My problem is I’ve never yet really seen a project through, or contributed to FOSS to experience that, though I really want to. I feel like I’d get overwhelmed, and can’t possibly contribute anything of value, and would just get in the way. I know it’s not true, there are endless projects of varying complexity, and I could certainly learn an existing codebase if I found the confidence to try.
Some (larger) projects sometimes have a form of mentoring and “good first issue” to get started.
Another good way to get involved is to report any issues you face with open source projects you use (obviously search for similar reports first). This way you can help debug bugs or suggest improvements and get some feedback.
Damm I think I might do some bulldozing sometimes, but is fair game when splitting into a different file for organization?
Yeah I don’t agree with “bulldozer code” bit. Splitting a long function into smaller parts doesn’t have to be about reuse. It’s useful to do it for clarity. As a single function grows, the number of local variable often grows as well and eventually you end up juggling tons of variables and the slightest change ripples three hundred lines further down. Break it down into a handful of steps with a number of arguments you can count on your fingers and it suddenly becomes so simple. Same about deep nesting of loops/conditions.
Rule of thumb is a function needs to fit in my head - so if I stick my face on the screen and the function’s code can still be partly seen, it’s time to break it down.
The main thing I encourage here is: If you’re breaking up longer functions into more smaller ones that are really only used in this context, don’t mix them into the same file as functions that are general use. It makes code super confusing to navigate. Speaking from experience on an open source project I contribute to.
A cubicle or desk populated with toys that came from ThinkGeek
What year is it?
checks git blame
Oh… 2014. That checks out.
Man, I used to really like browsing the stuff at ThinkGeek. Even bought a few things. Now that it’s owned by… I wanna say GameStop?.. it’s ceased to be interesting to me. I liked things like the laundry basket that looked like a radioactive barrel, the shower gel that looks like a blood bag… that kind of light-hearted novelty stuff. But the new owner just gutted all the interesting content, and it’s just all IP collectables now.
It’s been long enough I forgot bout ThinkGeek. Damn. Wish something like it were still around.
I’m a naughty programmer. What are the signs of that?
