this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
1018 points (99.2% liked)

xkcd

8973 readers
161 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

https://xkcd.com/2867

Alt text:

It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So how is the new thing different/better (other than less lines i guess?) If you dont me asking

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

it's simpler and a lot easier for another engineer to look at and understand later, so they can verify that it's right or change it if it's wrong or we decide to do something a little bit different. it's also been reviewed and tested by a lot of people working in a lot of cases that are all a little bit different from one another, so the odds that their code is correct are better than the odds that my code is correct, all other things being equal

[–] hikaru755@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's easier to understand, easier to review for correctness, and less likely to cause problems with additional changes in the future. Even though it sounds counterintuitive, software developers generally try to write as little code as possible. Any code you write is a potential liability that has to be maintained, so if you can instead just call code that others have already written and that has been tested, you'll want to do that. (Note that "less code" doesn't mean fewer lines of code, it means less logical complexity, which is often, but not always, also less in terms of characters/lines)

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So like my english teacher taught me. Keep It Stupid Simple(though he would say keep it simple stupid to some people in class i am just realizing now 20+ years later)

[–] hikaru755@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly that! KISS is an often cited rule among software devs.