"When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code." - Richard Pattis
Among other things, we discuss this quote in o...
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Maybe? Maybe not. I think like most quotes there's some truth there, but it's much more subtle.
I would say that seniors have the experience to know that this seemingly quick fix isn't going to work long term -- because they've done/seen it in the past and know it will blow up on them. New developers lack that experience.
I think a more interesting question would be to look at pessimists and optimists and see if there are some interesting data points there.
I think the pessimist/optimist question is interesting. I agree that the behaviour is more tied to traits of the person rather than seniority.
Depends on the problem, motivation, time etc.
Sure, I can deliver a clean change, but not if someone asks me to fix something at 23:00, because he just realized he needs it tomorrow. xD
We need to call in the "Senior Lead Fix Architect" to find the correct solution. :)
I agree it's more about understanding than seniority. A well trained senior has a better chance of finding a good fix, but that doesn't imply a junior isn't trying to do the same thing.
Reminds of 2 articles.
1) I can't seem to find a really old one that talked about the different between builders and menders
2)
Are you a Boy Scout?
Jason McCreary
I get the sentiment that juniors are probably hacking it together to just make it work, while more senior devs look into understanding the whole project and maintainability. But there's definitely a time and place for both and I don't think its stuck in a junior/senior dynamic.
Sorry for the previously broken podcast embed, it's fixed now.
Oh, it was broken, it seemed to work when I first tested. The mysterious world of software. We should really create a site where people can talk about their programming problems! :)
😄
It was a dependency issue. I think it mysteriously worked sometimes, possibly due to the order of things loaded, making the API sometimes available depending on how Rails magic cared to intervene.
Ugh, the most annoying defects!
But hey, now I can say during the show, "Welcome to Edaqa and Stephane, the show that helped fixed dev.to's dependency issues." :D
Me as a novice - Just glue things the way I want to fix and It'll be good.
Me in the future - Why did I put it there in the first place?
Sometimes we only end up using better glue instead. :/