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What little things make you happy while coding?

Jose Tomas Gonzalez on February 24, 2018

I must say refactoring code to make it look beautiful is my guilty pleasure

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Alain Van Hout • Edited

Deleting code.

(The context here being: working with problematic legacy code and getting to the point where you have new code (paths) that do(es) the same thing but without the issues, so that the old code, and its issues, can just be discarded)

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Ben Halpern

Yes!

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EJBroeders

Agreed!

Also, deleting code you wrote earlier in the project because you've made a more general applicable implementation, hence the old code isn't used any longer.

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Alain Van Hout

Yeah I saw that as included in the previous, since I don't see 'legacy code' as inherently being 'code written by somebody else' :-).

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Tokhir Dadaev

When we come up with this kind of comments:

//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows

I would suggest just comment out codes rather than delete (or have versioning in place).

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Alain Van Hout

I see some kind of VCS as a baseline project requirement, and in that case commenting out code is a very big anti-pattern.

And even without it, should an obsolete version of a codepath forever remain in your codebase, even long after it's become sufficiently inconsistent as to be irrelevant?

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Evaldas Buinauskas

Or deleting old code that just exists, is no longer used!

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Yury

yes. I've been deleting a lot of unused code recently and it feels so good. except for that moment when you realize that the code you deleted is used in another module but this is not documented anywhere

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Multi

ikr

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Roman Mikhailov

oh so true...

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Carlitos-X

Yep... This too XD

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Ben Halpern

If I have momentum on something and I'm locked in with my ideal monitor setup I feel like Batman at his dashboard. So much power at my fingertips.

When things aren't going so smoothly:

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Christian Vasquez

I'm a big fan of both having a calm + non-interrupted refactoring session or discussing with colleagues about alternatives of how to implement something or just naming conventions to plan to use.

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Lewis Menelaws

The pleasure of finally being able to get it or to make something work. Having all those tabs open to just have them closed is some of the best feelings ever... Especially when it looks like this:

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Jithesh. KT

True story. Pleasure of clicking on "close tabs to the right" 😁

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Yokim Pillay

The good-old picket fence!

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Pang Yan Han • Edited
  • Refactoring code to make it look good
  • When new code works on the first try and passes all the tests
  • Putting into practice knowledge that I've recently acquired
  • When I finally "get" something that I've been using but don't understand in depth
  • Reading good code written by others and getting mindblown by what I've learnt from them
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david

+1 for the last one. I've been working as a junior/front end dev on a freelance project with a C#/asp.net developer who has 12 years of experience. Reading his code and studying it until I understood how all the functions worked was a complete game changer!!

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Meghan (she/her)

It doesn't happen often because there's usually a catch when it does, but when code works the first time, I get really giddy :D

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Ben Sinclair

I usually feel extra nervous...

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MetaDave 🇪🇺

Yes, if all the tests pass immediately, that's a moment to step back and think reaaaaalllll hard.

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Bernhard Döbler

True. The feeling when you write code and the computer does what you intended.

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Andy Zhao (he/him) • Edited

I really like writing code comments, although I don't do it too often. I'm still learning how to make them meaningful first.

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Jose Tomas Gonzalez

I was taught that you should not use comments. To avoid comments your code should be written in a way that can be read like a comment.

I wrote a little article showing the difference of code that needs comments and other that it doesn't.

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Daniel • Edited

There are comments and comments. The comments explaining what the code does are usually a symptom that the code is convoluted and difficult to understand even for the person who is writing it.

On the other hand, there are comments like:

# This solves a bug in the library Fubar that prevented the Baz 
# from being executed. See: https://github.com/fu_bar/baz/issues/454

Or:

# Temporalirly removed as per request in Issue #1243

Those make perfect sense to me.

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Slavius • Edited

Works very well in commit messages when you have Bitbucket integrated with Jira. Hell of a difference!

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Ethan Stewart

A lot of truth to this, but an exception can and should be made when something merits an explanation of why it is the way it is. Comments should be few and far between in well-written code, but still used when there's an actual need. For me that's usually just when I had to dig to find a way to make something work when a more intuitive solution wouldn't work in that specific case.

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Jose Tomas Gonzalez

Indeed, some business concerns are just impossible to explain by code itself and as you've said, logic that by some black magic doesn't work.
The key is to know if comments are up-to-date with the code as refactors come and go and not everyone updates the comments.

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Ethan Stewart

With this I fully agree, that's something I've been trying to improve on myself.

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Ben Sinclair

While I agree with not using comments where the code can demonstrate its own purpose and mechanism, I don't like absolutes like "don't use comments". An RFC number or something can be very helpful, or a link to where you found the code you just copy-pasted.

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Third_Thinker

So am i.While i agree with Jose Tomas that try to make your code self-interpretation as possible.I'm trying!

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aurel kurtula

I read Stephen King's book On Writing, he described the development of the story as carving something out of stone. You just start hammering the hell out of the block then it just starts resembling an image (something like that).

My reaction was "Haha, that's what I do when I write code"

Only when I read that book I realised that that might be the reason why I don't look forward to finishing projects - hammering away is fun.

I love working on the heavy parts.

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rhymes

Refactoring, getting rid of code, Visual Studio Code that sometimes does magical stuff, having tests passing and how easier things are now that I'm using a 24" inch monitor again instead of the Macbook's 13" :D

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Ethan Stewart

I absolutely love getting to build things from the ground up. Some of my favorite things I've done at my job were things I had to start from scratch. I enjoy most coding tasks, even fixing bugs, but my favorite by far is seeing a feature or product I helped make with no code to start out with.

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Eljay-Adobe

An office with a door, so I can focus.

My guilty pleasure is I enjoy fixing bugs. Each bug is like a mini-puzzle, and (usually) is apparent whether or not it is fixed or still broken.

Two large monitors. And I'm super particular about keyboards. (IBM Model M forever!)

Clean code makes me happy. I wish there were refactoring tools for C++, like I had JetBrains ReSharper for C#.

The one surprise I had was how much I enjoyed TDD using C#, NUnit, and the awesomely amazing test-runner NCrunch. I really miss that now that I'm back in C++.

Endless supply of Diet Mountain Dew.

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rhymes

Love fixing bugs too!

If it's not a trivial bug you usually learn A LOT chasing a bug. Sometimes you end up with patches to third party libraries, sometimes you end up with more insight about the framework or the language or even parts of your own code you forgot about :D

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Eljay-Adobe

My two favorite bugs was finding a bug in the compiler (can't remember which compiler anymore, too many years ago - I'm sure it was not GCC), and finding a bug in the gdb debugger.

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rhymes

so "meta" :D

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Casey Brooks

Lining stuff up vertically. Whether it's the values in key->value literals, wrapped method parameters, class members, or anything else, everything is just so much nicer to look at when it's all lined up vertically.

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mikerg

Getting a pull request merged

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Jack Harner 🚀

Just had my first one yesterday and holy shit I'm still riding that high.

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Tokhir Dadaev
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Erik Nelson

Fixing up brittle, archaic tests so that they're fast and much easier to follow and iterate on.

In general just getting things to a more maintainable state for the future (probably due to joining teams where the codebase I have to grok is nearly impenetrable).

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David Yarzebinski

Coming back to old code after learning something new and applying it there. Feels great and makes me feel like I'm progressing, especially since I want to do this for a living and I only do it as a hobby at the moment.

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Gabriel González

Really basic but, autocomplete is the little thing that gets me going the most. That breeze you get when you press Tab and the function appears, is something magical.

Context: I've been coding for a little more than a year, being self taught, I discovered autocomplete like two months ago.

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Jose Tomas Gonzalez

It's very useful! Since i have to change languages from time to time it's a challenge to memorize what it will autocomplete and if it will be the same that i want hehe

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Slavius

Making my code read like a book?

Something like:

if (User.hasBirthdayToday()) {
  var banner = createBanner() {
    position = BannerPosition.Top,
    message = User.isOlderThan(18) ? getBeerBanner : getSodaBanner,
    backgroundColor = Color.NavyBlue,
    displayForSeconds = 15
  };
  banner.Show()
}

Instead of spaghetti code:

DateTime today = DateTime.Now;
bool userHasBirthdayToday = 
  User.DateOfBirth.Day == today.Day && User.DateOfBirth.Month == today.Month;

if (userHasBirthdayToday) {
  string messageType = "BIRTHDAY_SODA";
  if (today.Year - User.DateOfBirth.Year >= 18) {
    messageType = "BIRTHDAY_BEER";
  }
  string bannerMessage = Banners[messageType]?.getMessage();

  Banner b = new SiteBanner(BannerPosition.Top, bannerMessage, Color.NavyBlue, TimeSpan.Seconds(15));
  b.Show();
}
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Nicholas ―M―

I like testing with silly content, be it inside jokes as a message to see if a component has rendered, or injecting cat pictures as place holders.

My all-time favorite is adding in a marquee tag that scrolls by with "H E L P" in big letters when working with something that's been frustrating me. It never gets old, for some reason, and it helps me feel like I'm in less of a rut.

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Aswath KNM

No bugs ??? Thats a dream

But working in a peaceful environment , keeps me calm.

Already answered Stack Overflow Questions. If not how will I solve a problem ?

Refactoring code . Sure that helps better understanding.

Comments in code. But who are properly doing it.

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Alex Lohr

My guilty pleasure is replacing large external dependencies that were included just to avoid writing a few lines of code oneself with said few lines.

The last codegasm I had was when I replaced the whole of moment.js in an app where it was only used to format the users' time zones for tracking purposes with 4 short lines of script. Boom, 60kb less for the user to download.

Yes, I know there's NIH (not invented here), but sometimes I feel like that's just an excuse for being lazy and using overengineered solutions for simple problems.

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Antonio Radovcic

The first time something moves when making a game (especially with a new Lib/Lang/Engine/Framework)

When a complicated VIM-Command/Macro just works as intended

When I write really badly formatted code and Prettier/Gofmt makes it nice after saving.

TFW I realize "oh I can get rid of those 50 lines of CSS" and I type 50-D-D-Esc-:-w
(Delete 50 lines and save the file)

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Ben Sinclair

Finding someone else has the same, unanswered problem on Stack Overflow and remembering once you've solved it to go back and explain what you did with examples. Doesn't happen to me often enough, but it's a good feeling.

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Darryl D.

Coding without refreshing, lol. I would try to go as far as I can on a feature without loading the changes.

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Malgosia

I just love when I learn some trick or new feature or concept in some basic tutorials or article, and then one day working, I run into situation and realize that I can actually use it in my project (or it even solve some big issue) :)

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Bob van Hoove

Finding a library like Polly. It provides a variety of resilience strategies in a composable way. Think of retry, fallback, circuit breaker etc. The documentation is excellent.

It made me happy because it allowed me to deliver a much better quality solution than I could have rolling my own, especially 'within scope' for the task at hand.

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Lars Gyrup Brink Nielsen • Edited

1) Automated testing and linting in a neat DevOps pipeline 🤤🤤🤤
2) I have not looked back since I started using the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop kit 3½ years ago.
3) 2 pivoting monitors with one in portrait mode. Each at least 27" and 2560x1440.

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Renan Lourençoni Nobile

There are two main things that make happy while coding.

1) Candy and junk food in the workplace.

2) When we have a situation that really needs to be resolved and I can resolve it with a good, reusable code.

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Max Antonucci

Feeling all smart and professional. Much of my life had me feeling looked down on by people older than me. Being in control of complex code and in the flow of all the knowledge and information makes me feel like someone worth taking seriously :)

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Michael Minshew

I enjoy that moment when working on one language/project and suddenly something in a different language/project becomes clear.

That and when something extremely difficult and frustrating suddenly makes sense and becomes simpler.

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Yann Rabiller

Having a strange idea popping in my mind, immediately starting to code something and having some very basic structure that does the job, a few hours after.

Refactoring tests so that editing or adding tests are not a pain then in the ass anymore. Using stuff like Page object pattern when I need to refactor UI tests.

When another dev discovers your refactoring or implementation and thanks you for making their life easier. That's the best way of making me happy, I think.

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Alexei

Booting up the computer, open up the project I was working on and knowing exactly what I want to do.

Afterwards I'll likely make some refactoring to make sure it is modular and easy to upgrade.

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Camilla Santiago

Yeah! Same guilty pleasure there. Even though refactoring will take time, I'll take it. Just to make the code smooth and beautiful. 😌

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geraldcroes

The sound of the stroke keys ... especially when the flow is uninterrupted.

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juankOrtiz

Well, for me it's a warm cup of tea (or lemon juice in summer) while listening to the right kind of music. That helps me focus on the task at hand.

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Carlitos-X

Believe it or not ChillHop/LofiHipHop + Coffee = #BlissLife

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Carlitos-X

Has nothing to do with coding but sure helps while building the PRETTY part of a website in CSS lol

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Manuel Mariñez

It can be pretty basic but what I love the most is running that heavy, bothering and complicated problem I had working smoothly.

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Tobias SN • Edited

Getting an error. It makes me happy that I have this opportunity to learn about what I did wrong and improve. And then when I’ve fought through them all, it feels so good when it works.

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lukaszkuczynski

what do you mean saying "Gering" ?

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Tobias SN

Oh sorry I mean ‘Getting’.

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Chris Shepherd

Rewriting code that I wrote 10 years ago and realising just how much better I've got at this.

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Alex Carpenter

I used to be really concerned with proper indentation, now Prettier handles that for me and that makes me really happy.

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Maricris Nonato

Continuously seeking ways to lessen load times and memory consumption! Ahh best days!

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Márton Kardos

Segmentation faults

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Jochem Stoel

Writing some test code quickly without any syntax checking from the IDE and it working like a charm the first time I run it.

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Dheeraj.P.B • Edited
  1. Quiet and silent environment. I work in an offshore service industry kind of setup and I hate it when people put their overseas call on speaker eventhough only one person is attending.
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K

Finding that past-me has already implemented stuff I want to implement.

"So, and for the rest of the day... oh well guess work is done for today!"

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Erebos Manannán

Getting my team to use new tools I built to make them more efficient. Be that classes that help accomplish some repetitive thing, better CLI tools, some sort of CI automation, or whatever.

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Lyon

I love when someone hands me a paper document to fill out or for information. Every time I see this as an opportunity to show them how it could be done with web or mobile.

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GT Obadiah

echo "This post is in 3D format";
😂

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Luis Miguel

Finding a bug after hours of looking up for it.
Finding a big after a really short time of looking for it.
Guessing by a first attempt what a code (not mine) does.

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Anton

The clicks I get when I understand what I discovered.

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Pabi Forbes

Firstly, no warnings and red squiggly lines. My code compiling. Passing unit tests. And not forgetting a cup of coffee too.

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Caigan Fuego

alcohol. mostly.

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theldoria

I love learning something new, be it a new design pattern, framework, design pattern, programming language...

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Randel Ramirez

Seeing the application work and be built piece by piece. Being able to write code using design patterns and writing unit tests, and see good coverage.

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Esteban Rocha

I must say refactoring code to make it look beautiful is my guilty pleasure

+1 on this!

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R3i

When I finally solve that one problem that had me stumped.
Or those 'I didn't think that would work' moments lol

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dioguima

When your code runs perfectly in the first time, there is no words to describe the feeling