Programmers spend most of their time not writing code, but...

author | feenk Arrangement | Mengyidan 　
Produce | CSDN（ID：CSDNnews）

Facing the cold machine 、 Code 、 Tools , The first job of a programmer is to know what it is and why , Before we can start to knock out beautiful code .

In recent days, , A piece of 《Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out》 The article is in HacekerNews It has aroused the resonance of many developers , Author expresses , Programmers spend most of their time exploring the system , Instead of building systems .

For this topic , The earliest can be traced back to 1979 year Zelkowitz、Shaw and Gannon Published 《 Software engineering and design principles 》 A Book , The book describes , Programmers spend most of their time （67%） All spent on development and maintenance .

indeed , The book doesn't tell you what's behind this number , So in 40 Today, years later , What is the situation ？

stay CSDN Host 2022 Developer ecology meeting , Well known programmers ,MegaEase CEO Mouse with left ear （ Chen Hao ） Mentioned in the speech , No software company in China has an upgrade Department , Often old enough to 20 The system is still in use . As one can imagine , For such a system , Perhaps the first thing programmers do when they are hired is to figure out these old “ thing ” After that, he went on mending work .

Regarding this , The author mentioned that , The paper 《Measuring Program Comprehension: A Large-Scale Field Study with Professionals》 It points out the time allocation of programmers on a project , Which about 58% Time to understand the system , And explain how this figure is obtained .

Even in 40 Today, years later , The time spent exploring the system has not decreased . Although this is a very large project cost , But people talk more about how to build systems on a daily basis , Not how to figure out a system .

How do developers figure out the system ？ Developers find out the architecture and branches of the system by reading the code , This conclusion is also in the paper 《Measuring Program Comprehension》 It's verified .

Is there any other more efficient way ？ Why should programmers read the source code ？ In fact, for programmers , If you only know it but don't know why , It's hard to build the code in the next step , So find out the system , The main thing is to make better programming decisions .

Reading is just a means of collecting information from data , It also happens to be the most manual way , This provides an important opportunity for optimization .

Before doing something important , People tend to name , Otherwise, it will be like Voldemort . Years ago , Understanding the system and then doing the next step is called evaluation , It also suggests that development should be optimized around evaluation .

Extracting data through reading is the most mechanical way , There's no regulation modeling , It will also bring incomplete and uncertain information . Before we know the whole picture of the system , Decision making should not be based on faith . Data science tells us , It should be problem oriented to match the corresponding tools for reasoning .

Software is not an island , It's made up of countless related items , So people can't predict specific problems , But you can predict the problem category . Establish the idea of plastic development , After finding out the problem , Build a custom tool process , So as to quickly deal with the important content in the context . In the next decade , People don't need to read the source code to measure whether “ Figured out the system ”, It should be replaced by solving practical problems .

On this topic ,HackerNews Many people have mentioned pair programming , a gleenn Netizens put forward the pair programming mode ： People tend to avoid or struggle with pair programming , It is considered that the time and cost of pair programming are non pair 2 times , This is a completely wrong understanding . When he works in a place where he takes turns doing pair programming every day , Write code in front of someone who is familiar with the system and can immediately answer your questions , The efficiency of a new developer can soar , Millions of times faster than one person .

ID by kayodelycaon The user said , In a 100% Where pair programming takes place , It means that people who can't pair will be filtered , And whether pair programming can be carried out , It has a relationship with all aspects of the parties , For example, you have ADHD 、 Short term memory problems, etc . But I can write very good code , Will consider the readability of the code 、 Algorithm complexity 、 side effect 、 Testability and other small details .

Link to the original text ：https://lepiter.io/feenk/developers-spend-most-of-their-time-figuri-9q25taswlbzjc5rsufndeu0py/

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