
Programming Sucks (2014) - matthberg
http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
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LearnerHerzog
A rather pessimistic view of the industry, but I relate to his frustration
with some of the annoyances he discusses. As a semi-new developer, I've found
coding etiquette, or "clean code", to mean a variety of things from different
people, each of whom as certain as the next person that _their_ way is the
_right_ way.

My question has become: "How do I get to that level of code-confidence, where
I'm objectively certain of something somewhat discreetly subjective?"

Sometimes I feel like my personality lacks the pretentiousness required to be
a great developer. How can anybody act like a know-it-all in an industry a
million libraries of books couldn't cover in full? One that is still changing
every day?

Of course, there are reasonable rules that should be followed, but maybe the
less obvious or even important ones should be more prevalently established and
reemphasized to avoid confusion when it may occur.

Here is a personal example: A company's I interviewed for had me do a coding
challenge which is usually my strong suit in the interview process. They
emailed me afterward, saying that my code was not quite on par with what they
were looking for. This confused me because the functions worked perfectly, the
results were in the format they were asking for, and I left comments
throughout to explain my approach. Still, I understand and I am always willing
to learn from mistakes; _however_ , I asked for feedback (via email) and never
received a response, so I had/have no way to know what needs to be improved
and why.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
On the subject of interviews I don't think you can learn anything from an
individual rejection, you are much better off just moving on. It's quite
possible or even likely they won't tell you the real reason you were rejected.
Companies reject good candidates all the time and they know that.

