My experience has been the opposite. If I jump into a random Go code base, it’s been easier to figure out what’s going on than with languages that provide a lot more abstraction power. The reason, IMO, is that a bad abstraction is worse than less abstraction, and people are more likely to create bad abstractions than they are good ones.
I think it’s better with functional languages like scala and clojure, because bad class hierarchies with inheritance are the worst abstractions, but Go hits the right balance for me and I think for large organizations that have a lot of devs who move on and off of code bases on a regular basis.
I agree that you can get a better result with powerful languages, but that it’s unlikely in large orgs. I think software engineering at scale is more about sociology than people admit or realize.
I think I might agree when it comes to Java developers creating crazy class-hierarchies with no meaning. To me that is pretty much as bad as a desert of for-loops and low-level code, maybe even worse.
I'm praying for you that you at some point end up in a project with a bunch of good developers that work on a code base with a lot of good and high abstraction. The pleasure to improve your own skills in this area and feeling your productiviy rise is worth the pain of learning things to get there. It will be difficult to find this in bigger companies though.
> I think software engineering at scale is more about sociology than people admit or realize.
Yes, but it's only a matter of time. Software engineering is a growing and young field. There will be a time when we laugh about the bad code that was written, without standards and training. This time is not yet, but I'm looking forward to it. :)
Thanks for the great convo, really enjoyed it. I have been on a project with good devs, wrote a large scale web crawler in clojure for a famous research lab. These days I’m responsible for hiring/training/retaining hundreds of devs across many code bases, some dating back decades. It gives you a whole different perspective. Also, I don’t get to code all day anymore, but I still love to code, so squeeze it in on fun hobby projects. This also gives one a whole different perspective about what is important, and what is really worth keeping in one’s head.
I think it’s better with functional languages like scala and clojure, because bad class hierarchies with inheritance are the worst abstractions, but Go hits the right balance for me and I think for large organizations that have a lot of devs who move on and off of code bases on a regular basis.
I agree that you can get a better result with powerful languages, but that it’s unlikely in large orgs. I think software engineering at scale is more about sociology than people admit or realize.