Slow growth is awesome! Slow growth gives you time to address the challenges of growth, and think through sensible solutions.
Rapid growth feels like you're constantly plugging holes in the dike or putting out fires.
Like you I've had brief moments of jealously seeing a company that started after mine and grew faster. But when I think rationally, I just wish them well, and realize I'm happy with any pace of growth that's not negative.
Ignoring the git commit message strawman (those can include "what/why the change", not "what/why the code") and the Uncle Bob strawman, the final code block looks fine. But notice:
// translate will replace all instances; only need to run it once
This is a "why".
// Replace all symbols
This is a "what". It's better conveyed by improving the function name rather than by a comment:
String replaceAllSymbols() {
Ultimately this article buttresses conventional wisdom about comments.
Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com
Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.
Experience: Except for interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field. Masters or PhD is a plus. (Roughly 25% of our staff have PhDs.)
Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and analysis projects use Python and C++. Some projects use Java or Typescript/React.
> Companies that have disdain for their own customers ... do not endure in the limit.
This is a very common sort of wishful thinking that lets people bypass hard decisions. You create a company that loves its customers and employees and vice versa because you want to run a company that way. There are plenty of examples showing it's possible to run a sustainable business that way, and also plenty of counter-examples. There's no guarantee that it leads to business success or maximizes profits, it's just a choice you make.
Years ago our company consolidated on Firefox because we could rely on it to not send our information to remote servers. At that time other browsers made it hard to disable telemetry. Firefox was then the only browser that could forward Kerberos tickets to remote servers, for highly secure two-factor authentication and single-sign on.
I'm personnally sad that now we have to consider banning Firefox for company use, because it's hard to verify that we've disabled every AI "feature" that might funnel our data to remote servers.
C++ with Boost has let you grab a stacktrace anywhere in the application for years. But in April 2024 Boost 1.85 added a big new feature: stacktrace from arbitrary exception ( https://www.boost.org/releases/1.85.0/ ), which shows the call stack at the time of the throw. We added it to our codebase, and suddenly errors where exceptions were thrown became orders of magnitude easier to debug.
C++23 added std::tracktrace, but until it includes stacktrace from arbitrary exception, we're sticking with Boost.
The US federal government issues its employees smart cards (Common Access Cards) that contain digital certs. Government employees can use these to send and receive S/MIME encrypted emails. That's a couple million users!
Our small company has been encrypting all emails by default with S/MIME for 15-20 years. A company can generate its own certs for free from a company root cert, use a provider like Sectigo for $20/year, or get US Government ECA certs for about $100/year.
You can read encrypted emails on company-managed mobile devices that have Knox chips to secure access to the certificate. We're careful to back up all our old keys so we can always read old emails.
Some drawbacks are:
- Email "search" features only see the subjects, not the contents, of encrypted emails.
- You can't read encrypted emails via web email.
- Few others have S/MIME certs. Most major government contractors seem confused when we ask about encrypting emails with them...
Johnny may not encrypt, but every business really can.
> It's unfortunate that so many people end up parroting fanciful ideas without fully appreciating the different contexts around software development.
Of course that's true of both sides of this discussion too.
I really value DRY, but of course I have seen cases where a little duplication is preferable. Lately I've seen a steady stream of these "duplication is ok" posts, and I worry that newer programmers will use it to justify copy-paste-modifying 20-30-line blocks of code without even trying to create an appropriate abstraction.
The reality of software is, as you suggest, that there are many good rules of thumb, but also lots of exceptions, and judgment is required in applying them.
Rapid growth feels like you're constantly plugging holes in the dike or putting out fires.
Like you I've had brief moments of jealously seeing a company that started after mine and grew faster. But when I think rationally, I just wish them well, and realize I'm happy with any pace of growth that's not negative.
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