There’s no question I wrote the couple of things I’ve done for work to automate things, but I swear every time I have to revisit the code after a long while it’s all new again, often wondering what the hell was I thinking. I like to tell myself that since I’m improving the code each time I review it, each new change must be better overall code. Ha. But it works…
I stated programming games on a school computer in the early to mid 80’s. When the tape drive broke, I still used to have the code in my head, just type it all in for others to play. Now I find code I wrote last month and can’t remember doing it. At least it tends to be, “which genius wrote this” these day. Tend to leave comments everywhere for myself now, including my own name and other messages to myself like,“don’t touch this it works, your bug will be in…”
Yeah, I’m about the same age and started noticing my ability to keep everything in memory falling at around the mid 20s. I mean, I’m still probably way better at keeping all manner of obscure details in memory compared to the average person (we exercise that so much in this profession it’s only normal), but it’s below the peak point, not enormously so but it’s kind like having once been a top “athlete”, years later you know you can’t reach that peak performance anymore.
Also once you go through the full life-cycle of enough of your projects (that got shipped and a year or two later you have to pick it up and change it), you kinda figure out that even at peak “performance” you wouldn’t be remembering much from a project from years ago and start adding comments to help you pick it back up and alert you to possible pitfalls you noticed and avoided but forgot all about in the meanwhile.
Fortunally I figured it out long ago that I’ve created a couple of principles around commenting that have repeatedly saved my ass years later: things like documention parameter assumptions in functions, actually writting down the “why we do this” or commenting before the code of especially complex algorithms (I actually design the algorithm to the comment first and only after than code it).
Oh ruck. At twenty I could remember the direct way through the Zac Mc.Kracken Mazes. And all the chords of our Bands songs. And all the Beatles lyrics. But heck… no code… now I at least remember the bash scripts…
I started a practice with my team on our wiki. We have a section named the Oamonomicon, since out system is named OAM. Any sort of weird one off request or problem gets documented there. What were the symptoms? What steps did we use to find the problem? Then if we start seeing a pattern of issues, we have a better idea of how to resolve them.
Maybe I just haven’t worked at a company long enough for this to happen, but I tend to remember what I previously worked on very well. I am still disgusted by the code I wrote sometimes. But that just means I’m learning and getting better at coding.
Yeah, I guess that’s fair. I was a team lead for only like 2 weeks before my project was canceled, and yeah, I remember it being similar. I’m not sure I wrote a single line of code during those 2 weeks, though. I was too busy. Or maybe I did and I don’t remember, but since the project was canceled, it never came back to haunt me.
Me too. But the other day, a junior developer and I were looking at some fairly old code, and I recognized the writing style in the comment as mine. We ran p4 annotate and, sure enough, I was the baddie.
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dementia gaming
Why was this written like this? It makes no sense. I’ll git blame it and ask them what’s going on. Oh it’s me…
There’s no question I wrote the couple of things I’ve done for work to automate things, but I swear every time I have to revisit the code after a long while it’s all new again, often wondering what the hell was I thinking. I like to tell myself that since I’m improving the code each time I review it, each new change must be better overall code. Ha. But it works…
I stated programming games on a school computer in the early to mid 80’s. When the tape drive broke, I still used to have the code in my head, just type it all in for others to play. Now I find code I wrote last month and can’t remember doing it. At least it tends to be, “which genius wrote this” these day. Tend to leave comments everywhere for myself now, including my own name and other messages to myself like,“don’t touch this it works, your bug will be in…”
Yeah, I’m about the same age and started noticing my ability to keep everything in memory falling at around the mid 20s. I mean, I’m still probably way better at keeping all manner of obscure details in memory compared to the average person (we exercise that so much in this profession it’s only normal), but it’s below the peak point, not enormously so but it’s kind like having once been a top “athlete”, years later you know you can’t reach that peak performance anymore.
Also once you go through the full life-cycle of enough of your projects (that got shipped and a year or two later you have to pick it up and change it), you kinda figure out that even at peak “performance” you wouldn’t be remembering much from a project from years ago and start adding comments to help you pick it back up and alert you to possible pitfalls you noticed and avoided but forgot all about in the meanwhile.
Fortunally I figured it out long ago that I’ve created a couple of principles around commenting that have repeatedly saved my ass years later: things like documention parameter assumptions in functions, actually writting down the “why we do this” or commenting before the code of especially complex algorithms (I actually design the algorithm to the comment first and only after than code it).
Yes, very similar practices here.
@ProfessorPuzzleCode @Aceticon
Oh ruck. At twenty I could remember the direct way through the Zac Mc.Kracken Mazes. And all the chords of our Bands songs. And all the Beatles lyrics. But heck… no code… now I at least remember the bash scripts…
I started a practice with my team on our wiki. We have a section named the Oamonomicon, since out system is named OAM. Any sort of weird one off request or problem gets documented there. What were the symptoms? What steps did we use to find the problem? Then if we start seeing a pattern of issues, we have a better idea of how to resolve them.
Depression causes memory loss
That explains a lot… :(
Gandalf: I have no memory of this place…
“Who wrote this shit ?”
Spends 10 angry minutes in P4 timelapse
“Oh…”
Maybe I just haven’t worked at a company long enough for this to happen, but I tend to remember what I previously worked on very well. I am still disgusted by the code I wrote sometimes. But that just means I’m learning and getting better at coding.
When I was a team lead, I was juggling 4 things every day.
Meetings, help a junior, PR a critical system, code a thing.
Repeat every day and after a month, I wouldn’t remember what I worked on the prior month.
Yeah, I guess that’s fair. I was a team lead for only like 2 weeks before my project was canceled, and yeah, I remember it being similar. I’m not sure I wrote a single line of code during those 2 weeks, though. I was too busy. Or maybe I did and I don’t remember, but since the project was canceled, it never came back to haunt me.
Never git blame. 9 times out of 10, pretty sure it was me and I forgot
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sweats in Gitlens plugin
Me too. But the other day, a junior developer and I were looking at some fairly old code, and I recognized the writing style in the comment as mine. We ran
p4 annotateand, sure enough, I was the baddie.