MotoAsh

lol Me telling you why you’re being made fun of outside of your shitty attitude isn’t snark. Just further proving that lack of reading comprehension…

Unit tests have never been fun to me beyond the satisfaction of having good coverage. I mean good coverage that exercizes and asserts behavior, not just line/branch coverage!

Maaaybe the closest I’ve come to TDD was in JavaScript, not even TypeScript. Something about strict languages needing to be described a bit more explicitly seems to make code more tightly coupled in the general sense. Somehow, even beyond the literal code changes necessary. On one hand, that’s great because it’s harder to dig your own pits to fall in (see every reason TypeScript is even popular or ‘necessary’), but on the other, code definitely ends up less… portable? On a version to version change level within the same product, even.

In order to “properly” do TDD, I feel like I should only have to minimally tweak the tests once they’re defined, or else it’s not really “driving” the development. It kinda’ always ended up that I’d write the tests in tandem, which just doubled or worse the amount of work when an edge case or implementation detail popped up that wasn’t already factored in. Then I’d have to address the functional issue and then go fix/add a test(s) for it. The process just ended up being slower than finishing the impl first, and THEN writing the actual tests, because the little tweaks along the way simply have less code to cascade in to.

It’s really task-dependent on whether it pays off, IMO. If it’s new code/functionality, it really takes well broken down issues so you’re not writing multiple classes/features/concerns at once in order for TDD to feel remotely worth it. Which then has tradeoffs with extra task grooming time anyways. If it’s existing code you have to enhance or fix a bug of? TDD can pay off in droves when the tests keep you from breaking other things or missing side effects, and makes it very clear when you’re done with the task at hand to reduce the desire to refactor ugly code and whatnot. lol

IMO, how much trouble it is, is more about how testable the code is in general and whether you already have good test coverage, more than having tests defined first.

Not sure where writing tests fits on the problem solving spectrum. At least it helps as described for updates and bug fixes: you don’t have to focus on or check on nearly as much stuff to get a task done well. Writing new stuff, it’s always been more about how well structured and testable the design is than having the tests implemented first.

I suspect it ultimately comes down to the application’s complexity over all. When tasks and code can stay simple, like with proper microservices arch or similar simplifying practices, I suspect it could be easy enough to TDD “properly” in any language and maybe even enjoy it. Sadly, I haven’t had the pleasure of working on a clean project like that outside of pet projects where I’m too inconsistent on my work ethic to judge it. lol

Ohh executing examples and whatnot in the comments/docs is a good idea. I know a few frameworks/doc tools try that at least on a component level, but of course when you involve whole extra tools, it’s sometimes a big learning curve cost even if the boilerplate/setup is trivial. That would be neat to have functional comment examples and formal unit tests at a language level.

I think I tend to agree on bad comments. There has definitely been a few memorable occasions where I’ve axed multiple paragraphs of comments simply because they were old and a touch nonsensical after years of updates.

Yea I cheated a bit by bringing in API documentation, but then in my defense a lot of that I also write, or at least write the formal comments that end up compiled in to those docs. lol It’s also still a bit true when digging in to libraries to contribute, though. If the inline comments suck, most will probably not contribute unless it really legible code. lol

To me, there is almost always something worth documenting about a function, unless it’s boilerplate or just obvious data handling, of course. Though even then, if it’s at an app or library boundary, there is almost certainly some ‘why’ and limitations/etc to describe. After all, even basic CRUD at an API/app boundary will have multiple known modes of failure that have to be described somewhere.

Like I said. Reading comprehension. Lacking.

Snark just makes you sound 12.

That’s why it’s even more important to realize the machine has no intent. Its actions are solely the result of its creator’s actions in creating it.

I point out anthropomorphization so much because not only will it innoculate people against the advertising for it that WILL anthroporphize it, but when it fucks up, the appropriate people will be punished.

This isn’t a thinking machine going postal. It’s a dangerous product being pushed out with little regard for consequences.

Selling dangerous products used to mean something before billionaires bought the government…

It DOES matter. Directly. Fully.

If people think that the unthinking “AI” actually has autonomy, they will be less likely to hold the people responsible to account.

Why do you not understand that? It is a critical fact of the matter that modern day “AI” does not think nor want, because then responsibility of its actions should then rightfully fall on to who set up the Rube Goldberg machine with machetes on it.

This is not a machine going postal. It’s a dangerous product they’ve been allowed to sell.

We’re trying to impress on you the importance of culpability. If it thinks for itself, then it becomes a defective product. If it doesn’t, it’s a dangerous product.

It’s the difference between someone selling a car that happens to break down easily, and one where the brake lines randomly fall off because they fucked up the design and didn’t want to spend the money to do it right… It’s the difference between accidents and neglegence. This “AI” shit? Pure greed-fed neglegence.

The wording in the article is on purpose. They want you to think it doesn’t matter while they’re anthropomorphizing it, FFS. They want you to blame the bot, not the guy who made the obviously dangerous bot and then sold it to the world for billions.

Nowhere at all anywhere did I ever say AI is totally not a problem.

Maybe you should be less worried about reading between the lines and more worried about assuming what people didn’t say?

The bot didn’t want anything. It didn’t try to murder anyone. At all. What happened was, rich fucks with unchecked power are allowed to release dangerous, unethical products based on nothing but hype and vapid promises.

The only thing technology related is the involvment of AI, and it’s all BS and stupid. The AI DOES NOT WANT. The AI is not the one in control.

Without intent from the machine, this is EXACTLY THE SAME situation as every other time greedy capitalists pushed unsafe products.

Is the 9000000th time capitalists directly harmed society and those in it the time when humanity FINALLY learns to not let horrible shitheads run free over the world based on lies of promises!? Stay tuned to find out!!

Read the comic again. One day you’ll understand that you’re defending the butt of the joke. You’re the, “leave Britney alone” person of this post.

Even if you were correct (and you’re not), you’d still be wrong.

Yea he sounds like he wants to be contrarian on TDD if he’s thinking that equals no design. lol

IMO, thinks like factory constructors are just typical over-engineering things. I’ve yet to meet a programmer (that actually became one as a career) that learns a new pattern and doesn’t implement it somewhere it doesn’t need to be. (hell, I’d say that’s the entirety of the existence of blockchain and NFTs… outside of the money-grubbers/launderers, of course)

Why do you think TDD is so bad in Java and what makes it so easy in Ruby? My experience is mostly from Java, and there, TDD seems easy enough for a strongly typed language? At least when leveraging modern libraries/frameworks and coding practices so the pieces are actually accessible. I’m sure doing TDD with raw Java would suck ass for the patterns that don’t jive with IOC-adjacent design. lol

It sounds more like you straight up disagree with Ousterhout?

I agree with you, though. Inaccurate comments are tentamount to bad documentation, and nobody says bad documentation is remotely good for something…

In fact, that’s sometimes the biggest difference between different libraries/frameworks, and the one with better documentation almost always wins.

IME, single-line comments that deserve to stay are ones warning about unobvious context, like why a certain function call has funky parameter prep, or why a var is being treated differently, or even just a healthy reminder that ‘this’ math statement does actually need all those type casts.

Of course, if I find myself simply stating only what the code is doing, I’ll look for things to restructure/rename (because why the F did I feel the need to write a comment if it’s straight forward?), but they’re useful far more often than certain types (“code should be self-documenting!”) like to admit. Hell, some code ends up looking funky solely because it’s using a weird language feature or working around a language-specific issue and those usually-obvious things still sometimes deserve comments!

Just like how simple, elegant psudo-code can explode in to a mess when dealing with the real-world edge cases, sometimes simple code does deserve an explanation. Give the dev enough context to connect the simple conceptual idea to the complex state during the code’s execution.

Only time I remove such comments is when they’re referring to something that is already well documented somewhere. Like if it’s a method call with some funky parameter requirements, but they’re already thoroughly explained in the method’s own comments/docs, then that might get removed. Still though, if it’s funky enough that a coworker might have similar refactoring thoughts should they come through on their own, I might leave/add a comment about why the crappy statement(s) remain as they are (with reference to any docs) so the coworker doesn’t have to literally re-search why the code wasn’t refactored last time through. Promise it’s not 'cause I’m lazy!!

Your reading comprehension is severely lacking.

They’re commenting about how the name is bad and how that X is ruined in the public zeitgeist. Yes, X the display framework has been around for decades, but Random Joe 28507 still doesn’t know what that X is.

Murder requires intent. This is just more anthropomorphization of LLMs…