One character. One friggin’ “J”. 8 hours. I hope no one is keeping track of “lines of code per hour”.
Sounds like he / you acquired some essential domain knowledge in those eight hours. Your code is more efficient, and you understand the problem space. That is what programming is about, not how many lines of code you write.
(When working on a large existing code-base, my goal is to remove lines of code from the project. Writing code means you are writing bugs. Removing code means you are removing bugs :)
Judging from various codebases I've had to maintain, most programmers don't think this is a joke. They really think this guy wasted 8 hours learning how his code is supposed to work. They would have just reverted to last night's version and moved on to adding some more technical debt. (It's OK because it's test-driven development. If the tests pass, the code is fine!)
I'm sure most of the people here feel the same way. It just seemed like an audience mismatch, and if you acknowledged it (either the joke nature or the audience mismatch), I wouldn't have felt the need to "Whoosh" you.
I agree with your point but the TDD comment tacked on at the end is wrong and adds nothing.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak in support of TDD say that the code is fine if the tests pass. The canonical process of TDD explicitly calls for refactoring after the tests pass. That step is crucial and lasts as long as it takes for the programmer to be satisfied with the code (e.g. 8 hours).
I also found no evidence in the article that there was TDD involved. Perhaps I've misunderstood either the article or your comment. If that is the case I'd gladly retract my criticism.
Sounds like he / you acquired some essential domain knowledge in those eight hours. Your code is more efficient, and you understand the problem space. That is what programming is about, not how many lines of code you write.
(When working on a large existing code-base, my goal is to remove lines of code from the project. Writing code means you are writing bugs. Removing code means you are removing bugs :)