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Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way...

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mike3 wrote:

> However, you have to first know what perfection _IS_ to do that. How
> do you
> know what good code IS first? How can you gauge the "goodness" or
> "badness"
> of your own code?

Very fair question.  To which I don't have an equally good answer.

However...

How do you gauge the "goodness" ?  Well, it helps to have an independent 
standard of what is "good". Remember: the purpose of code is communication --  
that's what you are aiming to maximise.  (Not the only thing, I admit, but the 
main one.)  But that still leaves open the question of how you know what is 
good communication.  But at least it's a different question, and -- I think --  
rather easier to approach.

Adding to Patricia's suggested answers, I'll say that you don't need to know
what perfection is before starting -- in fact I assume that you (and I) never
do find out what perfection is.  In a sense that's what we are learning as we
go along.

More precisely, you start off able to see that your code is *as you understand
it then* not ideal.  That is, that you see flaws in it according to your
current best standards and possibly incomplete understanding.  You try to learn
how to do better according to those standards (ruthlessly criticising your code
according to the standards that you suspect /are/ still naive).  As you
progress you will discover not only ways to approach your current ideals, but
also new ideals that are more general, more insightful, or whatever.

Of course there is a risk that you'll end up going down a wrong path, following
your own ideas into a quagmire ("going up your own bum").  There are two things
which should protect against going weird like that:

One is that you are a person, and in fact a programmer, which means that you
are, in a lot of very essential ways, similar to the other people who will work
with your code.  That means that your judgements of what is good communication
will be pretty strongly correlated with what actually works for them /as/
communication.

The second is this: if you were working alone, and no one would ever see your
code, then it wouldn't /matter/ if you had developed standards that were
idiosyncratic to the point of weirdness!  But in reality you will be working
with other people's code, so you always have a check against eccentricity.  "Is
what I'm doing different because it is /better/ (in some way that I can
justify), or is it just weird ?"  You can't be better without being different,
but only eccentrics (and fashion designers) think that different is better ;-)

    -- chris

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If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com> - 2012-06-06 23:32 -0700
  Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-07 08:50 +0100
    Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-06-07 09:55 +0200
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-09 11:25 +0100
    Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com> - 2012-06-07 01:39 -0700
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-06-07 06:43 -0700
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-09 11:05 +0100
        Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-09 11:24 +0100
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-09 11:15 +0100
    Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-06-07 10:55 +0100
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-06-09 10:44 +0100
        Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-06-09 12:35 +0100
  Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-06-07 09:38 -0700
    Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com> - 2012-06-07 14:26 -0700
      Re: If "rigid rules" are the wrong way... Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-06-07 16:52 -0700

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