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Absolutely never deal with absolutes!
(All my work is solo. Does it stink? He's free to point out the issues or change his absolute.)
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(author here)
I received a couple of comments about solo developers. It's true that it's a different scenario. While writing the article, I was targetting in my mind teams of developers when one suddenly goes solo for some obscure reasons, which is a different case than yours.
Anyways... Even though you are solo, I hope that you still have a chance to work on code that has some visibility, whether it be an open source project that you work on as a hobby on your spare time or anything else. Feedbacks and criticism can be very helpful as far as experience is concerned.
[edit] just looked at the C++ articles you published. You know what I'm talking about.
Cheers
Nick
modified 25-Nov-14 3:48am.
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The code behind those articles was written without input, and 'in the dark' per your definition. If it doesn't stink, your article needs revised because you have dealt in absolutes that aren't true. If it does stink, you may leave your article intact, but tell me where it stinks. Personally, I feel your article is full of BS, but maybe I'm wrong.
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Did you even read the article?? I never said that coding in the dark == coding without input. Never.
Just read the article: "Don’t code alone in the dark. Talk about your code. Share it, ask your peers to look at it, to discuss it, to criticize it"
When you publish your articles online, you are talking about your code. You are sharing it. You are asking your peers to look at it, to discuss it, to criticize it. And you received feedbacks, you had a bunch of comments. That's the whole purpose. That's how great code is made.
You might want to at least read the first 3 lines of an article before saying it is BS.
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I read the full article before I labeled it BS. The code in my articles hasn't significantly changed due to feedback in quite some time. In fact, the last article change I made[^] was because of something I caught myself, even though many eyes had been on it. (And the changelog items of another[^] weren't due to any external feedback.) So yes, BS, unless you point out where I'm wrong, and my code stinks.
To state this another way, per your article's qualifications all of my code has been written 'alone.' You pretty much state code can't be good until it has been changed by an external review process of some kind. Since my code hasn't been changed because of external reviews, it must stink per your outlook. If you point out where it stinks I might agree with you.
But even if you point out stinky aspects, I still think you need to change your article because somewhere out there is a coder who is self-motivated enough to do things better than average on their own, You just haven't met them yet, and by painting things in such absolute terms you close your eyes to that possibility. As I said initially, "Absolutely never deal with absolutes!" Life is not black and white, and dealing with it in such terms is not very wise.
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I never saw a line of your code, but I made most of my code alone-in-the-dark...And a good part of them shining like diamond...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I don't know how you can continue to argue that way, having yourself written many things online.
What my article simply states is that when you write things that others will see, you will be more careful than when writing code that noone will see. It's just a a natural thing to do, it doesn't just apply to code and it is an absolute truth. Your article may not have had many changes, but it's in part due to the fact that you made sure it was of quality before posting it online. When we write code for others, it is always better than writing code for ourselves.
The term "code smell" might not be the best one. But the truth stays: if you know from the start that more than one person will be involved with your code, it will be of higher quality. period. And I'm not saying that people need to be involved in the input. They can be involved any time: through the design process, after code is written, years after on github, etc. Many eyes are better than 2. There's nothing revolutionary about what I wrote. It's common sense, just not a natural thing to do for us coders.
modified 25-Nov-14 13:22pm.
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nbize wrote: Many eyes are better than 2.
Yes, but writing for many eyes does not invoke the code-validation of those eyes.
nbize wrote: just not a natural thing to do for us coders
Go tell Linus, I'll wait here.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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That's one of the worse example you could have come up with... Linus does not work alone. He always talks about the code "his team" produces, not himself. If Linus had not opened up his code, it would have never had that impact. There's even a law named after him that describes the benefits of getting code out as a team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law[^]
It's not just programming. It's any field. Einstein was not alone. Jobs & Gates were not alone. The best writers still get a bunch of proof-reading, etc. etc. There is no one-man show in success.
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I'm sorry to say but you're not going to win this war on this site. You might as well give up at this point because you aren't going to change people's opinions. The problem was, you spoke in absolutes, and there are no absolutes.
I would cite things like Caliburn, written by Rob Eisenberg; Laurent Bugnion's MVVM Light; Sacha Barber's Cinch framework - all of which were solo efforts, and all of which are excellent examples of code.
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nbize wrote: That's one of the worse example you could have come up with
"Worst". And though many eyes help in spelling, as in bugfixing, it does not work pre-emptive. My apologies; but it is not unnatural to share code; the amount of open source shows that. It also hits another point; most businesses do not want us to share code in that fashion.
nbize wrote: There is no one-man show in success.
No cheap one-liners, please. This one hinges on your definition of "success".
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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nbize wrote: What my article simply states is that when you write things that others will see, you will be more careful than when writing code that noone will see.
Your article does not state or imply that. If you had used these quoted words in your article in some manner I probably wouldn't have taken issue with it, but you would have had to restructure much of the rest of it for clarity around this new usage of 'solo coder,' and 'writing for others.' Without such words in it, your article is BS clickbait. You have written much better on previous topics, and I hope you get back to writing quality entries, although most programming subjects have already been hacked to death by bloggers somewhere.
I have said my peace. Thank you, and happy coding!
David
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Well my whole 3rd paragraph was about that... But anyways you're not the only one pointing out that that message didn't come out right so I'll take some time to edit my post and make things clearer.
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I look forward to seeing the revision, and am upvoting your response because it improved my estimation of you.
Best wishes,
David
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I've edited the article. Hopefully it gives more precision about the parts that were misunderstood.
I'll see if I can include some sort of revision viewer in the future for those types of edits.
Cheers
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You are still fighting a losing battle, because you say that I am 'doing it wrong.' The code to my main project will never be put forth for you, or others, to review. Yet it is as high quality as the code in any of my articles because I know that taking shortcuts only hurts me in the end. Your picture is still too black and white. But it is better than it was.
Best wishes,
David
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In the end of the article, I precise what I meant by doing it wrong: "I am using the terms “doing it wrong” because there is so much more to gain from working on code as a group of individuals than as a solo dev". This does not mean that your code is bad. But just try this experiment: take any part of your main project code, post it on a dev forum and ask for feedback on what could be improved. I'd be surprised if everyone told you that everything was perfect and that you would not learn from others.
I'm not fighting a battle here. It's very hard to stay opiniated without appearing judgmental, and I might still need to change some phrasing or words so that my message is not misunderstood. And it's true that nothing is black and white, but I'd rather have sharp corners hoping that maybe one of my readers will have the desire to start asking for some feedback, to get some code review tool for his team, to be more open about his coding decisions, etc.
I'll take more time after work to get back on the article again and see if anything can be improved so that it is clearer.
modified 25-Nov-14 17:18pm.
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Nicolas wrote: code that has been entirely designed and produced by a single person, code which has never been seen or reviewed by others peers, code that has been produced in the dark is always a code smell.
This is too offensive and totally wrong conclusion and yet you're trying to persuade CP members. Most of CP articles are written with individual members and you are saying each members article codes are code smelled. What a conclusion ! Man there are lot of codes which always bring pain in the ass and fragile and yet developed and maintained by many devs.
As @Pete-OHanlon says you are not winning the war here.
Wonde Tadesse
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You are misreading me. Aren't CP articles "seen / reviewed / commented" by others?
Just like any open source work done by solo guys, any article / code that ends up in the open for others to see is what I call code "in the light" and is praised in my article.
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Yes it is. Anyone can comment the code in the comment section. If the code has defect it's also addressed. But don't expect every article to be commented. You can see mine. If you want too. And you can see my github as well. "This seems an advert" but it's an example what I gave you.
Wonde Tadesse
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I do not like to use 'dark' words - but a few come to my mind reading these absolute nonsense...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Starting in January 2015, Google’s Chrome browser will block all old-school Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI) plugins. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, given that Google started its efforts to remove NPAPI plugins more than a year ago. There's another spike in Silverlight
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From techcrunch.com: ...Silverlight still remains popular with 11% of Chrome users launching it at least once per month.
What I want to know is how does Google know this? Does Chrome phone home every time a plug-in is launched?
Jeremy Falcon
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There is a user setting for "Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports" I suspect they get a lot of data from that.
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