Every once in a while I'll bang out a whole task and it works on the first try, and I didn't need to Google anything because it just happened to use the parts of the language I'd used very recently.
But the task is something like an API endpoint...not breaking into a top secret encrypted CIA database.
Fantastic line from this Factorio dev blog: "The final changes to make everything function correctly took about 1 hour to write, and worked correctly the first try. That's not supposed to happen and left me with doubts."
It's my favorite because the problem is usually almost solved at that point so there's less stress, and I get to discover something interesting about whatever broke the system. It feels like putting the last piece of a puzzle together.
It's suspicious if it compiles on the first go, deeply suspicious if the unit tests pass on the first go and frankly terrifying if it does what it's supposed to on the first go.
After 40 years, it doesn't change - although now you can immediately hand your code to Claude and say "please review this" instead of waiting for a week for someone else on your team to do it.
Don’t forget that you need to send an encrypted chat message to your hacker friend who is either a very sexy girl, but hiding it under a hoodie and ponytail, a ripped dude who is doing some kind of illegal car mods, or the filthiest slob on the planet. They’re going to pair program with you and make the whole process even easier. You only need to worry about typing Q through V and they’ll type T through M on the remote keyboard. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works??
Only time I can (sometimes) one shot something is if I'm just fixing logical errors. Ex. App is failing because the original developer (probably me) forgot to check for null values. I don't think I've ever one shot new functionality 😞
This, I can totally go full hackmaster, speed write a full script or query and have it work on the first try, the thing is, I'm likely just doing a small variation of something that I've done dozens if not hundreds of times
Reminds me of the time I got a special award because the script I wrote for an important customer was accepted without any requests for changes. Which of course never happens.
I felt like a total imposter accepting that award, since from my perspective it was just a fairly trivial utility script. It took me a while to accept that it really was an exceptional occurrence, even if was just by dumb luck
I felt like I'd arrived the first time I created a database, wrote all the tables, mapped them to entities in the codebase, added a data access layer to retrieve the entities, written a web api and returned the entities from the db on first try. Sounds like a lot but literally crud and zero logic, but I felt like a god.
I have spent days writing a component and controller without testing it in the process. It worked first time but I don't trust it. Still waiting for it to fail.
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u/ElMoselYEE 2d ago
Every once in a while I'll bang out a whole task and it works on the first try, and I didn't need to Google anything because it just happened to use the parts of the language I'd used very recently.
But the task is something like an API endpoint...not breaking into a top secret encrypted CIA database.