Don't commit when you're drunk

by onatm • 13 years ago

89 73 13 years ago

T-zex• 13 years ago

If you do, you better call Saul.

csmuk4• 13 years ago

I've written and committed my best bugs when drunk. Undoing them was a valuable learning exercie. The finest being, in C:

   if (nr = 0x56) ...

That took and entire day to find and made me religiously avoid lvalue assigments in expressions by doing:

   if (0x56 == nr) ...

girvo• 13 years ago

I've written both my greatest (and most ingenious) code, and my absolute worst code while drunk. It seems to send me to one or the other extreme. No "average" drunk code here! Just awesome problem solving, or terrible terrible bugs!

meowface• 13 years ago

I'm sure everyone's seen this a thousand times by now, but it's incredibly pertinent for your comment: http://xkcd.com/323/

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

That should generate a compiler warning. And if you're not a criminal you have warnings set as errors.

csmuk4• 13 years ago

This was an oooold SunOS compiler that didn't warn about much other than you owe Sun more cash.

Also when you're drunk, the warnings result in "ahh who cares" :)

weland3• 13 years ago

There is nothing incorrect or dubious in C about an expression like if (foo = bar), so it wasn't considered a reason to warn the user about for a long time, despite being a rather common culprit for bugs. Compilers popping up warnings about that is a fairly recent event.

hipsters_unite2• 13 years ago

Yoda assertions, nice.[0]

[0] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jar...

delinka• 13 years ago

conditions* ;-)

simias• 13 years ago

I hate this convention to put literals on the left hand side of the comparison. Every time I stumble upon code like this my brains stalls for an instant trying to make sense of the expression. It just looks ugly and wrong in my opinion.

It's also mostly useless because your compiler should warn you about your first construct (and tell you to add a layer of parens if that's what you really want to do).

I realize I'm being a bit irrational with this whole thing but for some reason code like this drives me nuts (that and people not putting space around arithmetical operators and such: int a=2*4+foo(1,2,3)).

benjamincburns2• 13 years ago

I do a ton of code reviews, often as part of an interview process, less often, for embedded developers. Conditionals written with literal lvalues is something of which I tend to take note. You're right, it's not natural, and it's less readable, but there's usually a reason why people do it: experience. If you often work in weakly typed languages, or those which allow for weird coercion in conditional statements, it's sadly often easier to form a habit which guarantees fewer bugs than it is to say "I'll always type the boolean equality/strict equality operator."

"But why don't you use better languages, then?" Because in many cases (low-level resource-constrained systems programming), it's much, much easier to deal with these weird gotchas than to attempt to get exotic [1] languages such as Python, Ruby, Java, and sometimes even C++ (heap? who needs a heap??), to work. Even in cases where you're able to get these languages to work easily, you're just forcing yourself to become intimately familiar with the internals of some language with which you'll ultimately wind up wrestling [2]. Normally the point of such languages is to abstract away the system. This is the exact opposite of what you need in these environments.

"But it annoys me when people use literal lvalues where they don't need to." Ah, but this is the rub of forming a habit.

1: I'm mostly sarcastic in my use of the word "exotic" here. Don't go crazy, now. ;-)

2: Though to totally contradict myself, I will say that both Rust and Go look very, very interesting here.

Crito2• 13 years ago

It might be neat to replace the arduino/breathalyzer part with some sort of typos/minute metric, collected from the number of miss-typed commands you have had recently.

Trying to run `git psuh` too many times in an hour could get you a cooldown period so you can either sober up or wake up.

lmm• 13 years ago

It should be fine to commit when drunk, that's what VCS is for. Make it tag the last sober commit and disable "git push -f" instead.

mooism2• 13 years ago

And it goes beyond being drunk: sometimes I code when I'm tired but can't sleep. I have a vcs to ensure I don't trash something irretrievably; also tests and ideally a decent type system to increase the chances my code does what it should.

motyar• 13 years ago

Should be used in cars.

rplnt• 13 years ago

I've read about it being in some car(s) maybe a decade ago. Haven't heard about it since. Probably not something users want.

Cthulhu_• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's common to install a breathalyzer in cars nowadays if you've been caught with driving under the influence (probably repeatedly or over a certain percentage) in various countries / states.

clarkm• 13 years ago

They are -- I know a couple people that have had them installed.

belorn• 13 years ago

Is committing tired more dangerous than committing tipsy?

goldenkey8• 13 years ago

Gotta love the names..Krunk mode and Balmer mode. Who woulda thunk of that..oh no one except a drunkard. :-)

msantos• 13 years ago

    > Don't commit when you're drunk

That's a valid premise for whatever you do in life, not only Git.

timclark• 13 years ago

Also, don't edit your bash profile when drunk! In my youth I did this and it took 3 weeks to return to normality - I didn't know about source code control in those days.

scoot• 13 years ago

Obligatory xkcd ("Ballmer Peak"): http://xkcd.com/323/

Svip• 13 years ago

Don't worry, it is already a supported mode, which only lets you commit between 0.13% and 0.15% BAC.

professorTuring• 13 years ago

Kids and drunks always commit the truth.

watt• 13 years ago

This is wrong, this goes against DVCS philosophy.

You should be able to commit all you want all night long, but should not be able to push.

cema• 13 years ago

Precisely! And that's why we have two (logical) levels of commit.

crdoconnor• 13 years ago

Pushing drunk is fine. It's writing the code drunk which isn't.

NicoJuicy• 13 years ago

Slightly drunk is fine, for me it helps for not overengineering things and i just write code that works.

When completely sober, i think to much and i overengineer (overthink) stuff... Programming is just slower...

(Think DDD-like programming)

1 beer is enough to get very concentrated... Just don't overdue it (and don't make a habbit of it).

I only do it when i need to get things done, when time is limited... Never had serious bugs (Windows ME like) though :-P

It happens once in the 2 months and mostly it's for 2-3 days in the weekend (non-stop), with some light kind of music (Enya or concentration like mp3's) and headphones.

Yeah, i'm a nerd then :P

psutor• 13 years ago

I'd think the best use of this interface would be to only allow you to commit while in the Ballmer Peak.

np422• 13 years ago

One of my old colleagues had the bright idea to log onto one of our production systems to "re-index some of the database tables" after coming home one Easter eve.

And yes, he wasn't directly sober at the time.

I was moderately amused when I got woken up about 3 AM and got to spend a few hours trying to revert the "re-indexing" ...

I think integration with ssh-key management to prevent people logging onto production systems when drunk would be a good idea for this project, don't be surprised if there is a pull request from me in the future ...

exit• 13 years ago

definitely shouldn't commit with a decreased libido

dep_b• 13 years ago

Don't get into any commitment when you are drunk.

Period.

josefresco• 13 years ago

What about a check for prescription pain killers or amphetamines? Oh wait, those are culturally acceptable mind altering things. I'm half joking but this is a neat hack, although I know many functioning alcoholics that would laugh at the concept of this.

minimax2• 13 years ago

Why is this stupid frat house bullshit on the front page of Hacker News? We can do better than this.

danielweber2• 13 years ago

Because someone coded it up, which is more effective than I was on my projects this weekend.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

It boggles my mind that this needs to be said, even if in jest. Just looking at the subject, I think, "What kind of idiot needs to be told not to commit when drunk? Do they need to be told not to drive when drunk too?" And the article is worse than the subject.

phorese• 13 years ago

You're right, it doesn't need to be said. Everyone knows you don't drive or commit when drunk. The problem is that "drunk you" might disagree with "sober you", and want to drive/commit anyway.

That's why you install this cool thingy that doesn't let you commit when drunk. Sadly, it's not as easy with cars and drunk drivers...

Crito2• 13 years ago

Have you considered the possibility that you have encountered something called a "joke"?

They can be a little tricky, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of them if you try.

jose79• 13 years ago

What's wrong with a little bit of humor?

saucetenuto• 13 years ago

I felt the same way, and then I noticed that the authors included a Ballmer Mode.

Also, I learned that someone's made a breathalyzer attachment for the Arduino (should have been obvious, in retrospect). YMMV, but it was a good use of my 60 seconds.

forgottenpass2• 13 years ago

stupid frat house bullshit

Why is this hatred and stereotyping in the comments of a front page Hacker News article?

Is it particularly uncommon for someone that both drinks and is passionate about programming to write code drunk? Someone incorporated an arduino breathalyzer into a source control tool with some jokey features.

What's so stupid or frathouse-ish about that? It's not super-duper strait laced and serious, but neither is life.

minimax2• 13 years ago

If you want to get drunk and write code that's great. Good for you. But for a bunch of HN users to vote that up to the front page and be super excited about it is dumb. It's the acceptance and promotion of immature "brogrammer" culture that I find really distasteful.

benjamincburns2• 13 years ago

Yes, I realize (hope) this is a joke, but this is the most "programmer" response to a drinking problem I've ever seen.

    I know, I'll externalize and automate my impulse control!

nickthemagicman• 13 years ago

I didn't even read this. Is it as dumb as I immediately assumed?

Don't commit when you're drunk

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