Articles tagged “software development”

1. Thursday April 28, 2016

   Delete Your Dead Code!

   A few days ago, Ned Batchelder's post on deleting code made the rounds on HN, even though it was originally written in 2002. Here I want to echo a few of Ned's points, and take a stronger stance than he did: delete code as soon as you know you don't need it any more, no questions asked. I'll also offer some tips from the trenches for how to identify candidate dead code.

   This is the second in an ongoing series on eating your vegetables in software engineering, on good, healthy practices for a happy and successful codebase. I don't (yet) know how long the series will be, so please stay tuned!

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2. Thursday November 5, 2015

   Should Sense

   I've just finished reading Dan Pupius' Medium article on Software Engineer Traits, where he lays out four characteristics of great software engineers. I agree with his assessment, and want to add one more quality to the discussion -- something I call "should sense".

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3. Tuesday September 27, 2011

   Never Use Source Control GUIs!

   Just received this IM from my friend, Nick:

   11:48:58 AM Nick: kjsahfdlkjashdflkajshdflkjh
   11:49:02 AM Nick: it was the git gui itself
   11:49:09 AM Nick: it periodically refreshes
   11:49:14 AM Nick: with a forked git process
   

   Version control GUIs are uniformly evil. They entice you with a multitude of colors, and 1-pixel lines; their siren song is one-click commits and graphical 3-way merges.

   But, like Odysseus, if we have any hope of prevailing, we must lash ourselves to the mast and steer past this temptation.

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