RailsConf 2014 - Keynote: Writing Software by David Heinemeier Hansson

Many people might have already seen it, but I thought it'd make sense to mention DHH's talk at RailsConf either way. In his talk, he is coining the term "software writer", which goes one step further and motivates a style of programming which prioritizes clarity of code over alleged technical superiority. Very opinionated, but recommended nonetheless: link to this video

…uages I have tried I have found Ruby to be the most pleasant to work with, but I am sure this is different from person to person. One of the struggles that the writer seems to have is that programming applications is not science, but he seems to think it is. DHH has a great keynote on this phenomenon: "Writing Software by David Heinemeier Hansson" link to this video As mentioned in the comments of the article you will run into issues with any programming language. One of the tricks is to not hold on so tightly to 'rules'. Like (take from the article) 'break functionality into lots of small objects'. This is horrible advice if applied to all situations. You should only do this when it makes sense. I see…

I really like this1 talk from DHH on the subject, where he talks about the misconception of many programmers that we are doing science rather than something creative. While laced with hyperbolic statements it is at the very least thought provoking on some of the things that we do as developers. 1: link to this video

Software is read orders of magnitude more often than it is written. Therefore, the most important thing is to optimise your code for clarity. Software is an interative process. Sometimes it can take 5+ draft versions before you produce high quality code. There a good talk on this topic: Writing Software by David Heinemeier Hansson 1 If you're short on time, you can skip to the highlight here: 2 1. link to this video 2. link to this video

> This brought me back to the time my SO tried to explain an 84 year old lady she was assisting what is it that I do for a living. The consensus was that I'm a writer. Maybe relevant talk from DHH coming to the same conclusion: link to this video

Half true, I guess? I'm definitely in the camp of the CRUD developers. I do accept that I don't do lower level work (even making plugins/affecting how the framework works) in my day to day job. And it's fine. Evidently these skills are worth paying for and create value (monetary or otherwise) in the world. An interesting take on this and the wider topic of how to write software is DHH's keynote from 20140. He states that he himself is more interested in the 'Information System' parts instead of the 'Computer Science' part. I think there's space for more specialized titles to differentiate these jobs/skillsets. 0: link to this video