A Programming Koan

[jducoeur]

When the novice runs his program for the first time and gets six errors, he asks, "What did I do wrong?". When the master runs his program for the first time and gets no errors, he asks, "What did I do wrong?".

Attend this lesson, and be enlightened.

Comments

[keshwyn]

Indeed. :)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I hate when the Master puts the QA guy out of work. (:-)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Heh. No, a Master Programmer just creates bugs of extreme elegance and subtlety, which can only be properly identified by a master QA person :-)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I just finished up a project where the result of almost any slight runtime error was the simulation either doing nothing at all, or going into an endless loop.

Feedback is a good thing.

[laurion]

What other such nuggets might be placed into the new employee manual....?

A novice will strive to make the most effective code.
A master will strive to make the most effective comments.

There's something rattling in my head about tech support and the user not understanding the program vs. the program not understanding the user....

[jducoeur]

A novice will attempt to create the cleverest code.
A master will attempt to create the simplest code.

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

A novice will attempt to write the simplest code.
A Master will attempt to write the most efficient code... whether efficiency needs to be measured in CPU cycles, disk space, memory usage, ease of maintenance, portability, interoperability, or some other constraint.

(Yeah, that rambled on a bit too long...)

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I don't really agree on either point. Most novice programmers are *not* trying to write simple code, because they usually haven't been taught that that's important. Indeed, most problems with novice code are due to completely pointless complexity.

And I find that really experienced ones are rarely trying for the *most* efficient code in any respect -- rather, they're looking for a mix of reasonable algorithmic efficiency (but usually not trying to squeeze out every cycle), acceptable overhead, and good clarity. It's making good tradeoffs there that really shows the experience...