Top all-time · #1704
The Shape of Code
Personal blog · shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.comprogrammingdata
The Shape of Code is a personal blog at shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com about programming and data. Since 2010, 42 different Hacker News readers have linked it 59 times, most often “SE research is starting to become serious”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Derek Jones's blog as evidence on software engineering claims, such as the scientific support for McCabe complexity and COCOMO estimation, and on programming language design and C semantics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- SE research is starting to become serious3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-20
- Parsing R code: Freedom of expression is not always a good idea2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-07-17
- Happy 30th birthday to GCC2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-28
- Software effort estimation is mostly fake research2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-18
- Evidence-based software engineering: book released2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-09
- /2016/05/19/cocomo-how-not-to-fit-a-model-to-data/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-09
What Hacker News says?
Derek Jones argues McCabe Complexity and COCOMO were scientifically unsupported with little bandwagons pushing them for reasons of fame and/or funding: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2018/03/27/mccabe... http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2016/05/19/cocomo...
Comment linking /2016/05/19/cocomo-how-not-to-fit-a-model-to-data/
on “Simple, correct, fast: in that order”Submitted Software effort estimation is mostly fake research as a story · 780 points
HN discussionR is awful. It's full of decisions made by people who seem to not have much programming experience, in that they seem good at the time but cause major issues later on. See, for instance, http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2012/06/08/r-the-master-troll... , http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2008/12/use-equals-or-ar... , http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2012/02/29/parsin... , and the necessity of http://tim-sm…
Comment linking /2012/02/29/parsing-r-code-freedom-of-expression-is-not-always-a-good-idea/
on “The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy”Submitted Evidence-based software engineering: book released as a story · 290 points
HN discussionI was just about to write a response to 'Scratch bashing' ;-). Luckily you have voiced most of them. So I'd like to add the following: The Scratch programming environment, being the most child-friendly system I've ever seen so far (and I have tried to teach children, as well as adults with zero prior programming experience, using environments as different from each other as StarLogo and Python), lets children create…
Comment linking /2012/09/20/teach-children-planning-and-problem-solving-not-programming/
on “Career Day - A parent introduces programming at her son's school”Submitted Research software code is likely to remain a tangled mess as a story · 182 points
HN discussionNo, it preceededs Sun's decision by a couple of years. http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2017/03/22/happy-... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050525231654621
Comment linking /2017/03/22/happy-30th-birthday-to-gcc/
on “The culture war at the heart of open source”Submitted What can be learned from studying long gone development practices? as a story · 159 points
HN discussionFound it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254598 (Direct link: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2012/02/29/parsin... )
Comment linking /2012/02/29/parsing-r-code-freedom-of-expression-is-not-always-a-good-idea/
on “ Prototype PHP interpreter using the PyPy toolchain - Hippy VM ”Submitted Algorithms Are Now Commodities as a story · 155 points
HN discussionthese folks were the first to push CASE tools, which are a footnote in software history because they failed rather completely in actual production usage. they invented COCOMO, which never gets used for the easy reason of routine order-of-magnitude margins of error (60% in studies, 600% in practice...). they were the biggest pushers or UML and graphical programming, which dies and lives again and again in increasingl…
Comment linking /2016/05/19/cocomo-how-not-to-fit-a-model-to-data/
on “Yagni (2015)”Submitted Evidence-based Software Engineering – book beta as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> 3) Why do you consider a 20 year old paper that's only been cited 16 times to be critical reading about estimation, when a vast body of research in forecasting exists, written by people who have measurements of the accuracy of estimates to base their theoretical models on? Have some links to this vast body? I've encountered very few over the years that actually qualify as "science" as much of it is fake or close t…
Comment linking /2021/01/17/software-effort-estimation-is-mostly-fake-research/
on “Guide to Software Project Estimation”Submitted Performance variation in ‘identical’ processors as a story · 98 points
HN discussionThere's another review of the same study/replication/rebuttal at http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2019/11/20/a-stud... which agrees that the rebuttal is unconvincing and the replication study rightly showed the original studies were seriously flawed.
Comment linking /2019/11/20/a-study-a-replication-and-a-rebuttal-se-research-is-starting-to-become-serious/
on “A Brief History of the Current Empirical Software Engineering Science Turf War”Submitted Memory capacity and commercial compiler development as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThis post, written by someone who is or has been on the standardization committee gives a different point of view: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2014/08/31/undefi... What always surprises me is that, when a new optimization comes out justified by a sentence in a dark corner of the C standard, you can usually trace the sentence back all the way to C90.
Comment linking /2014/08/31/undefined-behavior-pay-up-for-shut-up/
on “Signed overflow in C”Submitted Most developers don’t really know any computer language as a story · 20 points
HN discussionYeah, it's 404'd now, but Google still has it cached: http://bit.ly/QN6XTt edit: Actually it looks like the entire article is still visible right on the blog landing page: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/
Comment linking /
on “Most developers don’t really know any computer language”Submitted Premium mediocrity is software engineering’s demographic as a story · 19 points
HN discussionThe original study saying formal verification was useless. In Section 6 of this paper [1], Avra Cohn gave a similar reality check when attempting to mechanize a hardware proof. Also, Guttman summarizes here [2] problems with many verification efforts. Finally, Wired has a modern take [3] on debate in 1979 paper by de Millo et al. These collectively represent most of opposition’ points to formal verification of softw…
Comment linking /2018/02/19/mathematical-proofs-contain-faults-just-like-software/
on “Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs (1979) [pdf]”- ot · 2017-03-28
Submitted Happy 30th birthday to GCC as a story · 19 points
HN discussion Submitted Software Maintenance via Genetic Programming as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Readability - We Know Nothing as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted First language taught to undergraduates in the 1990s as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Half-life of software as a service, services as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Licensing to decide the result of gcc vs llvm? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Source code has a brief and lonely existence as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The C++ committee has taken off its backwards-compatibility ball and chain as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evidence for the benefits of strong typing, where is it? (2014) as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
