Re: [9fans] XP (was: code complexity)

[Laura Creighton <lac@cd.chalmers.se>]

One reason that some people do not sit down and make their code
simpler is because nobody has ever told them to do that before.  At
any rate, when I insist on it, I keep getting told that I am the first
person who has.  The ones with bad attitudes are helped when they
notice that other people are also simplifying.  I think that a lot of
people are taught that 'Only the stupid people in class ever have to
write an answer over again.  Smart people get it perfectly correct the
first time.'  So they are badly offended when you tell them to do it
over again, because they think that you are telling them that they are
stupid fools.  (I have heard a variation from students which goes 'if
I had wanted to revise things, I would have become an Humanities
major'.)

I also think that polite people learn to not mention that _other
people_ have poorly written code, until they cannot notice that _they_
have written poor code.  We had student interns here last summer. Very
early on, the first week, I held a code review of some code I had
written in one hell of a hurry. And it was many, many hours before
they felt that it was in some way, _permitted_ for them to point out
flaws in my code.  Finally they got the idea.  And really liked
savaging their elders for carelessness, and ugliness, and complexity,
and all sorts of good stuff.  But first they had to know that we
really wanted to hear this.  Before that it was disrespectful.

Laura Creighton