Tell me a coding confession

What’s a habit or behavior you probably wouldn’t put on your resumé?

Comments

[Abraham Williams]

I Google almost everything because I don't remember the APIs, just that there is a way to do it.

[rhymes]

[Sung M. Kim]

Seems to work out for many React ⚛ devs.
And that's what's recommended by Dan Abramov 😛

click on the link in Dan's tweet

Dan Abramov

@dan_abramov

Okay, I give in. I wrote a guide on the most scalable file structure for React projects. I’m using it every day. Best part: it works for Vue projects too. Hope it’s helpful! ✨ react-file-structure.surge.sh

17:30 PM - 08 Aug 2018

15985244

[Terry Keeney]

I'm with you on this one...
I've been working in a particular platform so long that I've recently began to wonder if I actually still know how to code or whether I've just become particularly skilled at rearranging various snippets of code.
Whatever it is - the one thing I know for sure - I'm reasonably gifted at articulating my problem in a way that I can (usually) find the StackOverflow answer to solve the problem

[Gregor Gonzalez]

Same! Google driven development

[Yury]

I rely on my IDE autocomplete so much I sometimes forget the standard library

[Anil Das]

Hah. Everybody does this, so much so that Google actually put in a recruitment ad for people searching certain programming related queries.

[Yoandy Rodriguez Martinez]

That's why I have like a ton of docsets in Zeal

[tom hermans]

That's not per se bad. Knowing a solution exists and looking it up is way better than solving a problem you shoudn't have to

[Sdu]

I'm scared of contributing. I'm afraid of finding out that I'm incompetent so when I challenge myself to find a project to contribute to, I end up scrolling on github until I run away. Dare try to talk me into any, I have more excuses than gifs in @ben 's portfolio 🤣

[Ben Halpern]

That was me for years, and now all my code is out there for the world to see. 😳

[Molly Struve (she/her)]

This was totally me a year ago then I found some things I REALLY needed fixed in a few gems and that is what pushed me to finally do it. That first PR was SO stressful but I did survive and it has gotten a lot easier 😊

[rhymes]

Stop scrolling, contribute to dev.to! :-)

[Sdu]

Do I need ruby to do so? I'd need to brush up on it a lot

[rhymes]

The backend is in Ruby and Rails, the frontend is in HTML/CSS/JavaScript/React/Preact. The documentation is in English :P

[Andrew Bone]

You could submitting a bug report, submit a feature requests or reading over other pull requests to make sure they make sense and that still counts as contributing 🙂

[Sdu]

I think with also this approach, I'll understand the 'why' . The 'how' is always the easiest

[Bhupesh Varshney 👾]

Happens with me a lot 😅😅

[Jesse M. Holmes]

I console.log() things more often than setting a breakpoint and hitting the debugger. Working on it.

[Casey Brooks]

There's nothing wrong with println debugging! While breakpoint debuggers are a great tool, it is really hard to use them well in async code, which is where good logging is an absolute must! And sometimes, it's just faster and easier to print logs instead of stepping through line-by-line

[Gregor Gonzalez]

the old reliable!

[Molly Struve (she/her)]

I never practice TDD, I always write tests after I write the code. It just seems faster and easier 🤷

I also am not great with linux, I have to google simple command line commands all the time. I'm working on it though!!!

[rhymes]

I do hybrid testing, mostly after, sometimes TDD

I used to preach it but like all methodologies, it doesn't work all the time and requires a lot of discipline.

It's probably counter intuitive but I did a lot more TDD when I was a total noob, now I trust myself more. I have a mental map of most of the tests I have to write for the feature I have. If they are too many I write them in the ticket or a text file or whatever.

I think TDD shines with refactoring, more than for new features

[André Pena]

TDD only comes natural to me when it actually improves my productivity, which happens around 10% of the time.

TDD is helpful when you are writing pure functions which the result is predictable. For example, if you are writing a function that uses Regex to transform a string, it is much easier to TDD it until it works than running your entire system on every change until it works.

[Ben Halpern]

TDD is incredibly unintuitive and the majority of developers do not use it.

It is a great skill to eventually take to IMO. But there’s no rush. It’s someyhing worth casually nibbling on until you find places it really clicks.

[Alex Ayala]

I usually write my code first, add unit tests for new features/bug fixes, and then rely on my code coverage tool to tell me where I need to have more tests.

[Emma Bostian ✨]

Half my commit messages are "git commit -m 'Doing stuff'" :D

[Jack Harner 🚀]

git commit -m "random shit"

git commit -m "i don't even know"

git commit -m "stuff"

I'm in the same boat.

[Vibek Dutta]

Hahaha! So you've been doing just Frontend huh?

[David J Eddy]

I don't understand functional programming.

[Jason Steinhauser]

I've been preaching functional programming for several years now, and I still don't even grasp all the concepts.

[rhymes]

FP is hard!

[rhymes]

I think if you go down the rabbit hole of CSP, monads, combinators than it really gets trick but the basics are simpler than some people make them to.

You don't need to have a "pure" functional language to take advantage of it.

Use functions without side effects, pass functions as arguments (you do this all the time if you work with JavaScript and callbacks), envision your code as a series of composable operations instead of telling something to change state.

It's perfectly fine if you don't do it all time, or ever :D

Chances are you're already doing without knowing it.

[Kasey Speakman]

We (FP programmers) are great at making it not very understandable.

[Tom VanAntwerp]

• I use GitKraken instead of command line git. I just like being able to visualize everything I'm doing at a glance. And no fat-fingering risk.
• I still just console.log() stuff.
• I never write tests. 99% of the time, I'm solo'ing it and making something relatively small and uncomplicated, so I just don't bother with it.
• I will definitely press up in the terminal 20 or 30 times to avoid typing a long command again.

You know, none of that was too bad. I feel like less of an imposter writing it out. 😊

[David J Eddy]

Run

git config --global alias.tree 'log --graph --full-history --all --color --date=short --pretty=format:"%Cred%x09%h %Creset%ad%Cblue%d %Creset %s %C(bold)(%an)%Creset"'

Then

git tree

The Git built in CLI visualizer for git history. :D

[Philip Hallstrom]

Regarding the terminal... get fzf and integrate it into your shell. Then you can type CTRL-R and fuzzy search your history! Super great.

[Casey Brooks]

I'm pretty bad at asking questions. I'm definitely more comfortable digging through the mire of docs and source code than reaching out for help.

[Molly Struve (she/her)]

I still feel like my dev lingo knowledge is 2 years behind my actual knowledge and every time I am talking to someone I will never stop and ask what a word or abbreviation means. Instead I make a mental note, then after the conversation sit on google for 5 min figuring out what they just said and having ah-ha moments 😂

[Gregor Gonzalez]

I think "I could ask but I need to do this by myself" and then I waste hours searching. I don't want to bother others when they are busy

[Mårk Phoenix]

I do this. I worry about whether not knowing an acronym will make me look stupid.

[Ben Halpern]

I used to be reaaaaallly bad this way. I’ve become more comfortable asking questions over time.

[Kasey Speakman]

I spend way too much time thinking of every edge case and how things will scale. That tends to slow down my coding tasks. And I have a lot of coding work on my plate.

[David Llop]

I joined this year's Advent of Code but it's being pretty hard for me since day 3. I'm very good making websites, CMS, API's, objects/models, tests, all that stuff... But I suck at simple math operations or simple problems without objects 😭