It’s been a long time since we talked about something philosophical. So I thought I'd write a new post for you all, this time going back to basics....
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you make a lot of good points
I especially agree with 1) no blame game 2) look at the bigger picture 3) thinking about others 4) write stuff down.
I have some caveats, but they probably only mean the we work in different contexts
I somewhat agree on self-commenting code, but there are always cases were having the comment right there in another Dev's face is the right way to go.
If a bit of code is non-intuitive, a comment detailing it so other Dev's don't try to "fix" it may be appropriate. My personal example are coding patterns which solve major performance issues, but are not intuitive or self-documenting. Having that info in-context and not in a wiki is very important.
Totally agree. Good points in the article, but the second one is a big no-no.
Comments make the code harder to read, not to mention obsolete comments.
Regarding comments, there's one thing that I often do:
When I've found a solution to a particularly hard or obscure problem via StackOverflow or another internet resource, I almost always include the URL to that resource as a comment above the piece of code where I'm implementing it in my app's source code.
This way, whenever another dev (or myself) revisits that piece of code they're never left scratching their head "what the heck is this supposed to do", they can simply visit that link and read about the background.
Wow, that’s so thoughtful. ❤️
Well at some point it came naturally. Solutions sourced from SO or anywhere else can be pretty opaque and hard to understand when you're missing the context. To solve that I could copy/paste the text of the SO post as a comment, but just pasting the URL is easier and makes more sense. At the same time I'm sort of building up a little knowledge base. It's just become a habit and I'm pretty much always doing it (unless the solution is really obvious/trivial).
100% agree. To put a positive spin on it: Accept collective responsibility. (I admit it's not as catchy.) It's awesome to feel that your team has your back, and you theirs. I can't imagine collaboration and open discussion happening any other way!
Just to add: collective responsibility is not easy. It takes constant work from everyone. It requires you to stay empathetic towards others feelings. Make the wrong seemingly-innocent comment, and you might have played The Blame Game without realising. This happens (we're only human), but you have to fix things before the trust is gone.
Great tip -- I'll look into this. I often come across TODOs, shake my fist at it not being done ... and then realise I put it there.
Thanks Sarthak!
One of the teams I’ve worked with used to blame most code blunders on a long gone developer by calling it “___ code” (insert dev’s name in the blank).
git blameoften revealed some of us were actually the culprits. We started calling it “us code” because, even though it may have originally been written by another developer, we all looked at and touched that code every day, and did nothing to fix it.We also encourage devs to turn off VSCode extensions that continuously show
git blameoutput, as they can encourage a silent animosity amongst developers. Once it’s been reviewed, merged and tested, it’s all “us code”.Exactly! Everyone owns the code. Collective responsibility is a wonderful thing -- literally speaking, it means that everyone has the ability to respond. It also means less scowling at other developers.
That's an interesting point about git blame. I think the term itself is unhelpful. Why does it have to be blame? Sure, it probably started out as a joke, and I chuckled first time round ... but still it sets the tone. Maybe it should be changed to thank. Or hug. Or compadre.
Interesting 🤔
Great article Sarthak! From my perspective developers sometimes forgot about socializing with friends. It's easy to forget because late-night programming is very fun ;) However, we are still people and even introverts need sometimes to talk with others.
Can’t agree more
a lot of Uwwuuu Points, I like that 😄
So true.. Unfortunately, i realised the importance of good comments after suffering from few mistakes