Coding Horror: When Understanding means Rewriting - The Diigo Meta page

• 27 Jul 09
  

  Navneet Kumar

  CodingHorror Programmer Programming

  • 5x more time spent modifying code than writing new code
  • New code becomes old code almost instantly
  • 11 more annotations...
  • • Only the coding in the first iteration qualifies as all new code. After the
      first iteration coding quickly shifts to be more and more modifying rather than
      new coding.
    • our stabilization (aka bug fixing) milestones are as long as our new feature
      milestones
    • Modifying code consumes much more of a professional developer's time than
      writing new code
    • 3x more time spend understanding code than modifying code
    • you must understand the behavior of the code so that you can guarantee that the
      refactoring didn't change anything unintended
    • Understanding code is by far the activity at which professional developers
      spend most of their time.
    • I think the way most developers "understand" code is to rewrite it
    • very few developers are smart enough to understand code without rewriting
      it.
    • Nobody wants developers to reinvent the wheel (again), but reading about how a
      wheel works is a poor substitute for the experience of driving around on a few
      wheels of your own creation
    • If someone were to read the source code, do you think they could learn how to
      play [Monopoly]?"
    • I was still re-learning what the code did. Sometimes by reading carefuly the
      code, and sometimes by observing the functionality. But I think I would have to
      agree with Joel, I've never "rewritten" a mature program, something with lots of
      bug fixes from lots of people. You have to really understand the code and what
      the strange bug fixes are in order to think about how you can rework the code to
      include those fixes logically, rather than attatched on the end. And if you
      can't work that out, then I guess it's probably best to leave it.
• 07 Aug 07
  

  allendug

  code

• 25 Jun 07
  

  Alex Ko
  • What I cannot create, I do not understand.
  • If you want to know how the application really works, observe carefully how users use it. Then go write your own version.
• 25 Mar 07
  

  del__t

  imported furl

• 24 Mar 07
  

  test_dellll

  code imported:delicious

• 

  del_ttt

  code imported:delicious

• 02 Oct 06
  

  Ian Tompkins
• 24 Sep 06
  

  Fenimore

  developers software

• 22 Sep 06
  

  Julio B
• 

  Joel Liu

  code

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