Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

by Peter Seibel

The impulse to take things apart is a big part of what gets people into this line of work.

Then there was another book that everybody thought was the greatest thing ever in that same period-Design Patterns-which I just thought was crap. It was just like, programming via cut and paste. Rather than thinking through your task you looked through the recipe book and found something that maybe, kinda, sorta felt like it, and then just aped it. That's not programming; that's a coloring book.

There are no user-serviceable parts anymore. I feel like that kind of tinkering, taking the back of the tape deck off and seeing how the gears fit together, that sort of exploration is what led to this for me. Aside from things like LEGO Mindstorms, I don't think there's a lot of opportunity for people to follow that path these days.

what are the actual tools you use for debugging? Bloch: I'm going to come out sounding a bit Neanderthal, but the most important tools for me are still my eyes and my brain. I print out all the code involved and read it very carefully.

there are two ways to design a system: "One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." The paragraph that follows is equally brilliant, though it isn't as well-known: "The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature. It also requires a willingness to accept objectives which are limited by physical, logical, and technological constraints, and to accept a compromise when conflicting objectives cannot be met. No committee will ever do this until it is too late."

I think the lack of reusability comes in object-oriented languages, not in functional languages. Because the problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.