The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
What good programmers worry about (News)
Mon, 26 Aug 2024
Waymo cars make bad neighbors, Leonardo Creed pulls together wisdom from Linus Torvalds & the Art of Unix Programming to conclude what good programmers worry about, Max Schmitt makes the argument that toast notifications create a bad user experience, ChartDB is a web-based database diagramming editor, Simon Tatham makes a list of code review anti-patterns & scientists confirm that 'flow state' is very much a thing.
Full Episode
What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is ChangeLog News for the week of Monday, August 26th, 2024. Waymo is really taking off in San Francisco, but residents in the South of Market community wish they'd just take off altogether. A bunch of Waymo cars are gathering in a parking lot and honking at each other into the wee hours of the morning. Seriously.
Neighbors shared videos of driverless Waymo cars filing into the lot and backing into spots, which appears to trigger honking from the other Waymos.
After much negative social media and eventually press coverage, the company stated they know about the issue and are working on a fix. Much love to the dev who pulls that Jira ticket. Okay, let's get into the news. What good programmers worry about. Leonardo Creed pulls together some wisdom from Linus Torvalds who said, Bad programmers worry about the code.
Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships. Then he adds in the art of Unix programming, which said, data is more tractable than program logic. It follows that where you see a choice between complexity in data structures and complexity in code, choose the former. More, in evolving a design, you should actively seek ways to shift complexity from code to data.
Leonardo suggests the following, quote, start with the data. Try to reduce code complexity through stricter types on your interfaces or databases. Spend extra time thinking through the data structures ahead of time, end quote. This advice also comes from Leonardo's own experience. He says this, quote, I once worked on a project where we spent quite a while optimizing complex algorithms.
End quote. In politics, James Carville famously hung a sign on Bill Clinton's wall that said, the economy, stupid, because that's what really mattered the most to get Clinton elected. In software systems, we may need to hang a sign that says, the data, stupid. Toasts are bad, UX. Max Schmidt makes the argument that toast notifications create a bad user experience. What are toasts?
One good definition I've found says a toast is a non-modal, unobtrusive window element used to display brief, auto-expiring windows of information to a user. That sounds right to me, but why doesn't Max like them? He says, quote, the core problem is that toasts always show up far away from the user's attention. That also sounds right to me.
Max goes on to give a couple of examples and how he'd redesign the interaction so it doesn't need a toast notification. Lots of good thoughts in short form here. Check it out in your chapter data and the newsletter. ChartDB is a web-based, database-diagramming editor. What's cool about this open-source, self-hostable web app is its instant schema import.
Run a single query to instantly retrieve your database schema as JSON. This makes it incredibly fast to visualize your database schema, whether for documentation, team discussions, or simply understanding your data better.
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