zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
One thing that I find truly amazing is just the simple fact that you can now be fuzzy with the input you give a computer, and get something meaningful in return. Like, as someone who grew up learning to code in the 90s it always seemed like science fiction that we'd get to a point where you could give a computer some vague human level instructions and get it more or less do what you want.

>>gdubs+Z
There's the old quote from Babbage:

> On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

This has been an obviously absurd question for two centuries now. Turns out the people asking that question were just visionaries ahead of their time.

It is kind of impressive how I'll ask for some code in the dumbest, vaguest, sometimes even wrong way, but so long as I have the proper context built up, I can get something pretty close to what I actually wanted. Though I still have problems where I can ask as precisely as possible and get things not even close to what I'm looking for.

>>forgot+zG
How do you know the code is right?

>>godels+9S
The program behaves as you want.

No, really - there is tons of potentially value-adding code that can be of throwaway quality just as long as it’s zero effort to write it.

Design explorations, refactorings, erc etc.

>>fsloth+M41
And how do you know it behaves like you want?

This is a really hard problem when I write every line and have the whole call graph in my head. I have no clue how you think this gets easier by knowing less about the code

>>godels+9j1
By using the program? Mind you this works only for _personal_ tools where it’s intuitively obvious when something is wrong.

For example

”Please create a viewer for geojson where i can select individual feature polygons and then have button ’export’ that exports the selected features to a new geojson”

1. You run it 2. It shows the json and visualizes selections 3. The exported subset looks good

I have no idea how anyone could keep the callgraph of even a minimal gui application in their head. If you can then congratulations, not all of us can!

>>fsloth+Sr1
Great, I used my program and everything seems to be working as expected.

Not great, somebody else used my program and they got root on my server...

  > I have no idea how anyone could keep the callgraph of even a minimal gui application in their head

Practice.

Lots and lots of practice.

Write it down. Do things the hard way. Build the diagrams by hand and make sure you know what's going on. Trace programs. Pull out the debugger! Pull out the profiler!

If you do those things, you too will gain that skill. Obviously you can't do this for a giant program but it is all about the resolution of your call graph anyways.

If you are junior, this is the most important time to put in that work. You will get far more from it than you lose. If you're further along, well the second best time to plant a tree is today.