- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
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This symbol isn’t needed for spells this long, but it’s considered best practice and other wizards will make fun of me for not including it, even though it isn’t needed.
mood
LBRP versus the Lord’s prayer.
If you’re adding code you don’t understand to a production system you should be fired
Edit: I assumed it was obvious from context that I’m referring to copy-pasting code from stack overflow or an LLM or whatever without knowing what it does but apparently that needs to be said explicitly.
I really like to build from zero, but some things are better copied, no matter if you fully understand them or fall short. :)
For example, I’m not qualified to check if Hamilton and Euler were correct - I only do as they explained, and later double-check the output against input.
I didn’t say never copy and paste. I’m saying when you push a commit you should understand what all the LOC in that commit do (not counting vendored dependencies). If you don’t understand how something works, like crypto (not sure what Hamilton or Euler refers to in this context), ideally you would use a library. If you can’t, you should still understand the code sufficiently well to be able to explain how it implements the underlying algorithm. For example if you’re writing a CRC function you should be able to explain how your function implements the CRC operations, even if you don’t have a clue why those operations work.
Never use libraries you don’t contribute to in Production
There’s a huge difference between copy-pasting code you don’t understand and using a library with the assumption that the library does what it says on the tin. At the very least there’s a clear boundary between your code and not-your-code.
Many times the code we work on is built in abstractions we don’t know about from top to bottom.
If you are submitting work, you should understand how the code you’re submitting works. Sure, you don’t have to know exactly how the code it calls works, but if you’re submitting code and there’s a block of code and you have no clue how that block works, that’s a problem.
So you code everything in Assembly from scratch?
Are you seriously trying to equate “I don’t know which instructions this code is using” to “I copied code I don’t understand”? Are you seriously trying to say that someone who doesn’t know how to write
x = a + bin assembly doesn’t understand that code?No, they’re pointing out that it’s a little silly to expect everyone to understand each and every later of abstraction fully before deploying code.
I said you need to understand what the code you wrote (as in, LOC that git blame will blame on you) does. Not that you need to fully understand what the code it calls does. It should be pretty obvious from context that I’m referring to copy-pasting code from stack overflow or an LLM or whatever without knowing what it does.
“Oh, dude, you gotta stop using TJ’s Action Rune of Changed Files. That runebook has a backdoor to one of the hells now. Didn’t you see the patch notes?”
I never update my spell book and nothing bad has ever happened.
Help. Infernal imps somehow got inside my sanctum and used my scrying orb to send rude messages to the rest of the Circle.
You got lucky. Somebody snuck a wyrm into my codex that got all of my thralls mining for coin bits.
Ugh, look, I get it. I know TJ’s Lesser Action Rune of Changed Files that the Greater version does now, but TJ’s price structure is bullshit and I’m not paying for Greater just because he refuses to “support” us users of Lesser. I don’t even have a damn Portal, much less a Summoning Circle! Why are you so worried about a backdoor to the hells? Unless I connect this sigil to the weave nothing is going to come in or out. This sigil is only for monitoring the moisture content of my garden by way of a spell scroll attached. As we both know, scrolls and sigils use two different elements to communicate. One is gold ink and the other is silver ink. I have to use TJ’s Action Rune of Changed Files to see if the document has changed due to moisture. The scroll cannot directly talk to my watering golem’s receiving crystal.
whats that? i use yenjis discus checker scroll, i know it was abandoned long ago back in the old days of the spell assemblers (when they were still a thing) but IT. JUST. WORKS. i dont need those fancy new features, i just want to see if the runes and incantations written on my magic discus got corrupt or not.
tries to hide C:\jp\scripts\whuj9f.bat and the fact he copied 90% of the thing from a post in the offtopic section of a gaming forum behind his back (with no success)
oh also hhe62m.lsp was copied off a magic spellbook dont ask about it
Man this is just another great example of why I think software is essentially magic.
At the root of it, the hardware, it’s magic smoke. It’s all based on magic from that point up - because the layer below the one you are using “works because it does.”
I think it depends a lot on a person’s individual knowledge. If you keep studying far enough away from your main area of expertise, there’ll still be some point where you stop and have to blindly accept that something “just works”, but it will no longer feel like that’s what your main field is based upon.
Imagine a chef. You can be an OK chef just by memorizing facts and getting a “feel” for how recipes work. Many chefs study chemistry to better understand how various cooking/baking processes work. A few might even get into the physics underlying the chemical reactions just to satisfy curiosity. But you don’t need to keep going into subatomic particles to have lost the feeling that cooking is based on mysterious unknowns.
For my personal interest, I’ve learned about compilers, machine code, microcode and CPU design, down to transistor-based logic. Most of this isn’t directly applicable to modern programming, and my knowledge still ends at a certain point, but programming itself no longer feels like it’s built on a mystery.
I don’t recommend that every programmer go to this extreme, but we don’t have to feel that our work is based on “magic smoke” if we really don’t want to.
ADDED: If anyone’s curious, I highly recommend Ben Eater’s YouTube videos about “Building an 8-bit breadboard computer!” It’s a playlist/course that covers pretty much everything starting from an overview of oscillators and logic gates, and ending with a simple but functional computer, including a CPU core built out of discrete components. He uses a lot of ICs, but he usually explains what circuits they contain, in isolation, before he adds them to the CPU. He does a great job of covering the important points, and tying them together well.
