25th
“monad tutorial fallacy” and reading great code
For over a month now I’ve been planning a blog asking for examples of great code, code that is worthy of study. The idea being that programmers could learn from the masters they way practitioners in other disciplines do.
But reading about the “monad tutorial fallacy” makes me wonder if this is viable. Just as you can’t understand how monads are burritos without having struggled with the problem on your own I suspect you can’t grasp the greatness of a piece of code without having struggled with the same (or similar) problem first-hand.
If I’m right the idea of having students read the works of master coders might be a lost cause. However this probably strengthens the case for code reviews. People on the same team do struggle with the same problems, so the best code on the team is certainly worthy of study. It might not be the Great but better to have Good that you can benefit from than Great that you don’t.
