Depends on perspective. If most of what I do is edit text when I program, then an IDE is more of a general purpose tool. But like I said, it depends on language. As a Rails and C++ developer, I don't see the value of an IDE as I would in Java. I would value an IDE in Java because of autocomplete, building, import management, compilation checking, refactoring function/member names safely and occasional debugging. Not all of these apply to Rails or C++:

Rails:
* No build required
* No import required
* No IDE supports "good" compilation checking
* Simple debugging using print/raise is usually sufficient

C++:
* Use make for building
* No free C++ manages imports (to my knowledge)
* No free C++ IDE supports refactoring function/member names (to my knowledge)
* Most of C++ debugging is related to pointers, and for that we have valgrind


I don't know what's considered large, but I'm guess no. My project at work is 16k lines (250 files), excluding tests. A couple of my personal projects are each 6-8k lines (75-100 files).


Yes, the critical areas of my code are non-trivial and multi-threaded...

Yes, I'm on new project/subprojects. What's your experience like?

Yea I rarely ever copy paste stuff unless it is clearly the obvious way to do something. But in general that convo explained so much about why he sucked. Refusing to google the thing you are trying to build and only looking up language semantics is hilarious.

I forget that exact example but I think it had to do with filtering/sorting two lists and was actually probably more like 5 lines and the rest I had to add.

I have a minified js file and a sourcemap file, anyone know of the easiest way to unminify the js? From googling I've found Node packages that will supposedly do it, I don't super want to mess around installing Node and stuff considering I've never used it. Actually, I'd be willing to offer cash for anyone who can do it for me

What was the feedback you got in general terms?

I see what grim is saying wrt writing a lot of code.

But when you’re maintaining a project I don’t think it’s uncommon to spend 1 or two days finding a bug that ends up being like a 2 line fix. That’s pretty common in my job.

Also IDE debuggers >>>>>> command line debugger

For jumping around inside my codebase (which is massive and hard to read) I use ctags in VIM. Best thing I ever discovered. Let’s you jump to functions/structs with ctrl + ] and you can go back with ctrl t.

The larger a project gets, and the older it is, the more thought each additional feature takes. You have to start thinking about consistency, there are lots more places that could have unexpected consequences, there are maybe more "users" of the software and you have to consider their needs and expectations.

If you're modifying an existing feature then even more so. And of course any large project involves finding and fixing bugs, some of which may be very subtle, or rare, or difficult to invoke yourself.

If you're trying to tune the performance of something, or trying to find a bug in something, you will do way more reading that writing of code. If you're trying to modify a system to support a new feature, you'll probably do more reading and code navigating than actually writing.

I work on a series of related projects - a set of services. These total about 150k LOC between python and JS.

I work on a C++ project that is absolutely not my own - it's an open source project that we've forked and modified. It's enormous and complicated, I spend way more time reading than writing in that. It's not uncommon for me to spend 2 days in there and only commit 5 lines (I will have added/removed more lines than that in the process, but not a lot more. Maybe 100)

I'm not against using google. I just used google to figure out how to use TLS1.2 in windows powershell to download a file (it defaults to 1.0 and *fails* if that's not available). I happily copy/pasted the solution from stack overflow.

But I would think it was odd if someone was "mostly" copyiny/modifying from the internet, or really, even if it was a lot.

My boss agrees, I think his boss does too, but theirs does not. It's a bit of a story that I can't give too much details on, but my impression is that they feel they have not always been successful with their hiring, so they needed to step it up.

I feel that no one is really as successful with their hiring as they *think* they should be

This is very good advice. Also the part about making lots of mistakes

I was prepared to switch back to Windows at my new job, if everyone else is on Windows. But not if these are the options:

Sure seems like they're trying to sell the mac route.

You're going to be pretty unhappy with 4GB of memory

In the video card?

Oh duh. I no reed gud. Carry on. Macbook!

**** yeah - Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz!

I use a macbook for my main dev machine and do maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of my dev on a windows desktop at home. A properly setup windows machine with the tools you need is fine but I generally prefer the macbook.

I <3 my iMac

Oh, if you're going to do docker at all, and I think you should, get the mac. Windows docker support seems weird. I admit I have not spent a lot of time on it, but it was wonky in comparison.

The reason to use docker is that AWS has support for deploying docker containers to a cluster that works fairly, well, and it makes it very easy to make your dev and prod environments identical (well, or very close - my dev environment uses a mysql container, prod uses AWS RDS mysql, but the container running the code of the site is identical down to packages and versions and config)

Thoughts about this thread?

Yeah, I think that's true. AWS is a classic example of an MVP, it works well enough that people want to use it, but no better. It is awkward as ****, the API is not great, the interface is ****ing terrible, cloudformation is a verbose **** garden. I don't really know if azure or google or oracle's offerings are really any better or not.

But also for the most part, you get your stuff set up and you mostly don't worry about it too much from there. I change cloudformation setup like... 4 or 5 times a year. Mostly I use a set of (in house) tools that manage it for me. Those tools probably wouldn't be of particular interest to other people, because what they do is take the vast config language and boil it down to just the pieces we want, configured in the way we typically use them.

So I change our AWS infrastructure by editing a small json file that causes a much larger cloudformation template to be created. Getting that tool working was a giant PITA, but that's mostly done now and it's fine.

In the past 36 hours or so since I posted this I've had massive unrecoverable site fail on:

• 1-800-Flowers.com (had to buy elsewhere despite two customer support reps trying to help)
• fidelity.com
• bofa.com
• frontier communications
• my new job HR site (Error: Object not found in /myServlet/doStep.do - right in the page)

I feel like there are some more.

Is this a common thing?

I could actually do that - I'd just use my node meetup talk - which gets into enough code nitty gritty.

I've done it before. For my current job, for example, I suggested that I present to them a few projects I'd worked on, in lieu of a coding test. I wasn't worried about passing the test, and the presentation probably took longer and was harder, but it was a stronger result. Passing the test is a low bar, showing off an interesting piece of software is better.

I'm the opposite right now. I'm so rattled on whiteboard/codepad. My brain just freezes up and I can't think creatively.

It's like trying to be witty when some hot girl across the room smiles at you. Some people are good at it. I can barely put a sentence together. So it comes out mechanical, boring and awkward. Over the cacophony of my panic, I can't hear my inner-voice which is trying to offer up some creative/funny take.

I've always been like that with women. I didn't used to be like this in coding stuff. But after bombing that first codepad interview I'm super shook now.