Comment by Joel_Mckay
5 days ago
Obfuscation is usually just a lack of accountability, and naive job security through avoiding peer-review.
Practically speaking, if people can't understand you, than why are you even on the team? Some problems can't be solved alone even if you live to a 116 years old.
Also, folks could start dropping code in single instruction obfuscated C for the lols =3
Whitney has valid reasons to write code this way. If you look at his career, you'll understand how this is not a problem - he literally spent decades working on "one-page" programs written that way. It's not "for the lols", it's simply what he's been comfortable with for 50+ years.
He's a software developer from a different era, when individual programmers wrote tiny (by today's standard) programs that powered entire industries. So for what he's been doing his entire career, neither lack of accountability, job security, or working with teams are really applicable.
> He's a software developer from a different era
Ivory tower politics is never an excuse, and failure to adapt to the shop standards usually means your position ends. Inflicting a goofy meta-circular interpreter on people is a liability.
Anyone competent would normally revert that nonsense in about 30 seconds, as it looks like a compressed/generated underhanded payload. "Trust me bro" is also not a valid excuse. =3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Law
This isn't about Ivory tower politics or gate keeping. It's just a fact. Software development changed and Whitney started his career 45 years ago.
If you need help understanding what I mean, look at the credits of computer games released in the 80s and early 90s. You'll usually find a single programmer, with maybe one or two others, who contributed specialised parts like sound/music processing or special effects. No one cared about your particular programming style, because there were no big teams, no code reviews, no PRs. If you had questions, your fellow programmer would simply sit down with you and go over the details until you got familiar with their style and -code.
> failure to adapt to the shop standards usually means your position ends
Well, he runs his own company and has been his own boss for the past 32 years so again - this simply doesn't apply to him.
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