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  3. I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm getting old ...

I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm getting old ...

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  • M Mike Winiberg

    THis is, of course, the real benefit of pair programming. My (admittedly limited) experience of how pair programming works in large orgs is that it is competition, not collaboration. Which makes it less than helpful.

    K Offline
    K Offline
    Kate X257
    wrote on last edited by
    #20

    I made up a type of pair programming, where we share the screen over zoom, and I only watch / help whenever they have a question. Does the same thing, but I can get work done in the downtime, and we don't have to schedule stuff.

    M 1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • L Lost User

      Soon to be followed by: "How to update record?"

      "Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I

      C Offline
      C Offline
      Clumpco
      wrote on last edited by
      #21

      And then...

      if(a="999")
      {
      MessageBox.Show("DATA DELETERATED");
      MessageBox.Show("ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US");
      }

      So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • K Kate X257

        I made up a type of pair programming, where we share the screen over zoom, and I only watch / help whenever they have a question. Does the same thing, but I can get work done in the downtime, and we don't have to schedule stuff.

        M Offline
        M Offline
        Mike Winiberg
        wrote on last edited by
        #22

        That sounds very sensible. I went to an job interview once at a big gov. - supposedly 'agile' - dev place. I was given a pair programming task to write a test for a function, using tools I was already very familiar with. As soon as I sat at the keyboard I could see a glaring error in the function I was supposedly testing (an uninitialised variable in a language that enforces initialisation), so not only would the test fail, the code wouldn't even compile. My pair stopped me correcting that error until I had written a test that showed the function failing - which of course couldn't be done because the code wouldn't compile. I wasn't offered the job, as I wasn't a good fit for their culture... 8)

        J 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • J jschell

          At my level of experience I always expect that now. I will ask a colleague to look at the code with me knowing that as I explain the problem to them and show them the code that I will figure out the solution myself.

          S Offline
          S Offline
          seismofish
          wrote on last edited by
          #23

          You don't even need a human. I find explaining things to my cat can have the same effect.

          <°}}}>«<

          P 1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • L Lost User

            I have a better one, the assignment includes the following:

            Quote:

            check if the key schoolHours is true, and if it is, set the key playtime to true

            So I suggested he needs an if clause:

            Quote:

            Thanks for your answer. Please what goes inside the if () {

            J Offline
            J Offline
            jweled
            wrote on last edited by
            #24

            That one's pretty simple...

            if ((!(schoolHours == false) == false) ? false : (schoolHours == 1))

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

              ... but some of the QA questions just make me want to hit something / someone. No links, no names ... but he has code like this:

                              if(a>0)
                              {
                                  MessageBox.Show("DATA SAVE SUCESSSFULLY");
                              }
              

              And he wants me to add this for him, because he can't work it out:

              else
              {
              MessageBox.Show("RECORD ALREADY EXISTS");
              }

              I can't decide if he's unbelievably lazy, too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, or a troll ... :omg:

              "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

              D Offline
              D Offline
              Dave B 2022
              wrote on last edited by
              #25

              It's hard to tell from the lack of context, but it appears as if your user is asking for feedback that the operation is over and that they should not repeatedly execute the event (such as push a button) to attempt to make your software work. Modern software is asynchronous and with the limited context, it seems like a very reasonable request to know when your operation has completed. I guess back in the day the UI thread would block while you were running your database update code on your UI thread and the fact that the application is now responsive again would tell you that the operation has completed and just didn't do anything.

              OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • S seismofish

                You don't even need a human. I find explaining things to my cat can have the same effect.

                <°}}}>«<

                P Offline
                P Offline
                purplemur
                wrote on last edited by
                #26

                Also known as Rubber Duck Debugging. One of the most useful programming techniques I've ever learned.

                I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. - Douglas Adams

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                  ... but some of the QA questions just make me want to hit something / someone. No links, no names ... but he has code like this:

                                  if(a>0)
                                  {
                                      MessageBox.Show("DATA SAVE SUCESSSFULLY");
                                  }
                  

                  And he wants me to add this for him, because he can't work it out:

                  else
                  {
                  MessageBox.Show("RECORD ALREADY EXISTS");
                  }

                  I can't decide if he's unbelievably lazy, too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, or a troll ... :omg:

                  "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                  W Offline
                  W Offline
                  WPerkins
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #27

                  People with two years of high school classes who have done some "HTML programming" and have Google are professionals now. So interviewing a candidate I sketch out some simple thing, usually on a white board, to write. It would take you and I less than a minute thought, take longer to write out than think out. New programmer should get it. You know, "sort three integers" or "which of three is greatest", etc. Don't worry about coding, I really want to hear how they think it out. So I had one guy say to me "I can do this if I am hired - I don't really want to give my labor away". Then he was puzzled when I immediately stood up and thanked him for coming in and said "I'll consider you for the position" and he was OK with that... I considered him till I got him just past the front desk. Arrogant 25 year old "professional". No, not because we are getting old.

                  OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • D Daniel Pfeffer

                    dandy72 wrote:

                    the world's population is going up, while the average IQ is a constant.

                    It's actually the total IQ that is constant; the average is therefore going down! :-\

                    Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.

                    D Offline
                    D Offline
                    dandy72
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #28

                    See? I'm living proof. :doh:

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • L Lost User

                      I have a better one, the assignment includes the following:

                      Quote:

                      check if the key schoolHours is true, and if it is, set the key playtime to true

                      So I suggested he needs an if clause:

                      Quote:

                      Thanks for your answer. Please what goes inside the if () {

                      A Offline
                      A Offline
                      Al Fargnoli
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #29

                      Back in my Fortran days, I found this. (I don't remember the variable names.)

                      IF FLAG1 .EQ. .TRUE. THEN
                      FLAG1 = .FALSE.
                      FLAG2 = .TRUE.
                      ELSE
                      FLAG2 = .FALSE.
                      END IF

                      I replaced it with two lines that I thought were obvious:

                      FLAG2 = FLAG1
                      FLAG1 = .FALSE.

                      I made plenty of other changes, and the manager in charge of the codebase thanked me for "cleaning it up." (This happened almost forty years ago when 10 MHz processors had only been around a few years.)

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • D Dave B 2022

                        It's hard to tell from the lack of context, but it appears as if your user is asking for feedback that the operation is over and that they should not repeatedly execute the event (such as push a button) to attempt to make your software work. Modern software is asynchronous and with the limited context, it seems like a very reasonable request to know when your operation has completed. I guess back in the day the UI thread would block while you were running your database update code on your UI thread and the fact that the application is now responsive again would tell you that the operation has completed and just didn't do anything.

                        OriginalGriffO Offline
                        OriginalGriffO Offline
                        OriginalGriff
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #30

                        Nope, this is just a "INSERT to DB" followed by a test to see if it worked. Retries haven't occurred to him yet ... and I suspect Console rather than UI given his skill level.

                        "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                        "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                        "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • W WPerkins

                          People with two years of high school classes who have done some "HTML programming" and have Google are professionals now. So interviewing a candidate I sketch out some simple thing, usually on a white board, to write. It would take you and I less than a minute thought, take longer to write out than think out. New programmer should get it. You know, "sort three integers" or "which of three is greatest", etc. Don't worry about coding, I really want to hear how they think it out. So I had one guy say to me "I can do this if I am hired - I don't really want to give my labor away". Then he was puzzled when I immediately stood up and thanked him for coming in and said "I'll consider you for the position" and he was OK with that... I considered him till I got him just past the front desk. Arrogant 25 year old "professional". No, not because we are getting old.

                          OriginalGriffO Offline
                          OriginalGriffO Offline
                          OriginalGriff
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #31

                          WPerkins wrote:

                          I can do this if I am hired - I don't really want to give my labor away

                          This is because we all sit around writing apps to calculate factorials, or do bubble sorts on ten items and get paid for it ... :laugh:

                          "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                          "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                          "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                          W 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • M Mike Winiberg

                            That sounds very sensible. I went to an job interview once at a big gov. - supposedly 'agile' - dev place. I was given a pair programming task to write a test for a function, using tools I was already very familiar with. As soon as I sat at the keyboard I could see a glaring error in the function I was supposedly testing (an uninitialised variable in a language that enforces initialisation), so not only would the test fail, the code wouldn't even compile. My pair stopped me correcting that error until I had written a test that showed the function failing - which of course couldn't be done because the code wouldn't compile. I wasn't offered the job, as I wasn't a good fit for their culture... 8)

                            J Offline
                            J Offline
                            jschell
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #32

                            Mike Winiberg wrote:

                            at a big gov...as I wasn't a good fit for their culture...

                            Of course. They really were looking for people that would write code that would not work. Those decade long maintenance contracts aren't needed for stuff that works.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                              ... but some of the QA questions just make me want to hit something / someone. No links, no names ... but he has code like this:

                                              if(a>0)
                                              {
                                                  MessageBox.Show("DATA SAVE SUCESSSFULLY");
                                              }
                              

                              And he wants me to add this for him, because he can't work it out:

                              else
                              {
                              MessageBox.Show("RECORD ALREADY EXISTS");
                              }

                              I can't decide if he's unbelievably lazy, too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, or a troll ... :omg:

                              "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                              M Offline
                              M Offline
                              Matt Bond
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #33

                              I'll add debug logging for ELSE conditions so I explicitly know which way an IF statement resolved when I look at the logs. When messaging, not so much. But then again, we just had a QA today that created 4 order number templates that were exact duplicates and then was wondering why a duplicate order number message was appearing when he created orders while switching back and forth between the templates. I don't think anything beats the junior Dev that thought their Unicode issue was caused by the font being used.

                              Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                ... but some of the QA questions just make me want to hit something / someone. No links, no names ... but he has code like this:

                                                if(a>0)
                                                {
                                                    MessageBox.Show("DATA SAVE SUCESSSFULLY");
                                                }
                                

                                And he wants me to add this for him, because he can't work it out:

                                else
                                {
                                MessageBox.Show("RECORD ALREADY EXISTS");
                                }

                                I can't decide if he's unbelievably lazy, too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, or a troll ... :omg:

                                "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                                U Offline
                                U Offline
                                User 11907673
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #34

                                Lazy and dumb are not mutually exclusive... ;) but given it is one of those unlikely to be a troll. You should see what I get in my Data Structures college course. I emphasize to them it is not their fault up to now because prior professors have not required even minimal standards, but it IS their fault from this moment forward because now I have explained to them how the real world will look at their efforts.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                  ... but some of the QA questions just make me want to hit something / someone. No links, no names ... but he has code like this:

                                                  if(a>0)
                                                  {
                                                      MessageBox.Show("DATA SAVE SUCESSSFULLY");
                                                  }
                                  

                                  And he wants me to add this for him, because he can't work it out:

                                  else
                                  {
                                  MessageBox.Show("RECORD ALREADY EXISTS");
                                  }

                                  I can't decide if he's unbelievably lazy, too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, or a troll ... :omg:

                                  "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                                  M Offline
                                  M Offline
                                  MikeCO10
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #35

                                  Griff, My first response was lazy, but I'd have to go with dumb. Lazy was based on it being easier to ask someone to do it for you, but dumb because posting the question takes longer than a quick search on how to write an if statement. Nothing wrong with not knowing how to do something, but asking something that would be found on your first search engine query is pathetic. Then again, the premise of the conditional is completely wrong. "Record Exists" is not an "else" to a successful DB insert.

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • R rnbergren

                                    I chalk this up to those moments when something is so obvious but I can't see it. I remember one time having to bang my head against a wall. Gave up and asked team for advice. setup in conference room to review where I was having issues. as soon as I looked at it in the conference room. I could then "see" the issue and fixed it in moments. I think these users are sometimes having that sort of well brain fart moment.

                                    To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer

                                    O Offline
                                    O Offline
                                    ormonds
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #36

                                    Ah, you don't have to trouble co workers. The rubber duck method works - buy a rubber duck and explain to it what you are doing. OK, maybe in private.

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                      WPerkins wrote:

                                      I can do this if I am hired - I don't really want to give my labor away

                                      This is because we all sit around writing apps to calculate factorials, or do bubble sorts on ten items and get paid for it ... :laugh:

                                      "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                                      W Offline
                                      W Offline
                                      WPerkins
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #37

                                      I have just written a utility in C (not C++, not C#, etc.). Created my own link list to build a dynamic "array", add by key, accumulate duplicates by key, sort by key, display accumulated summary. Some of the younger guys were amazed one could do that in C from scratch... not a single "new", no framework. Total size around 40K bytes.

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