So Mads was correct then, after all?
Bad testing is worse than not testing at all.
You’re still wrong though: GZip is not as fast as Deflate. It’s ALWAYS slower. How much slower depends on the situation. GZip just uses Deflate for its compression, but it also calculates a CRC-32 checksum and adds a header and footer to the compressed data.
Hi Jeff.
I don’t think that you should write “more responsibly”. This is your blog, yours and no one else’s. You have total freedom to write whatever you want, the way that you want.
The ones that should act more responsibly are us. We must think for ourselves, we must not take whatever we read as the whole truth. We are developers; we claim to be smart people. If we are that smart, then we shouldn’t be around taking anything that we read for granted.
Regards,
Arturo Martnez.
I don’t know much about the inner workings of the Stopwatch, but how do you know that it is showing the exact time it is used to run your code? What if there was some context switching in between?
I think that is what happened to Mads’ calculation.
I was wondering which site the trolls all had gone off to. Surely a story with 25 comments on reddit doesn’t really warrant a blog post? Not that it wasn’t a good read.
Could you enlighten us on why the stopwatch code works? I’m not a .NET programmer and trying to navigate msdn makes me want to stab myself.
I don’t think I walked away feeling like everything he said was the truth; but I did walk away with a valuable and accurate lesson from yesterday’s blogpost. We DO need to learn to market ourselves better. It may not be the most valuable thing, but it will certainly separate you from the mediocre. Also, the DND reference was kind of (albeit sort of unnecessary) accurate.
At any rate, I think you guys are coming down too hard on him. People shouldn’t walk away taking everything implicitly to heart, but rather get the gist of his point, see if it’s applicable to their scenario, and apply it if so.
Jeff - I enjoy and appreciate your blog, keep it up and many thanks.
You’re still wrong though: GZip is not as fast as Deflate. It’s ALWAYS slower. How much slower depends on the situation.
Like I was saying:
the best content always begins where the blog post ends. My audience is far, far smarter than I will ever be.
Jeff,
It’s ironic that the people who could benefit the most from your idea are the one’s who reject it the most forcefully. I could find fault with the post if I was so inclined, but that is true of almost everything, and this isn’t a marketing blog anyway. I would rather see more ideas in imperfect posts than fewer ideas in perfect posts.
The best way to approach most writing is to try to figure out what the big idea is and then move on. The big idea in that post was that persuasion is important for technical people. If you really want to piss them off, do a post on the importance of networking for technical people.
It really sucks that many technical decisions are affected by non-technical considerations and that it’s not enough to simply have the best technical solution. It really, really sucks. However, that’s the way humans are wired and that’s the way the world works. If we want to make a contribution, we have to figure out how to get others to accept our ideas and our work, and that involves persuasion. Or coercion, but that’s probably the next post.
Thanks for the blog.
Matt
Jeff,
bahbar is absolutely right. Just change the order of tests (deflate first, gzip second) and you will see.
So in reality you got:
gzip:
243
163
deflate:
231
157
sound of us all falling for your link bait 
It’s intentional right? The headline The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know is straight out of How to Write Link Bait Headlines 101 (see CopyBlogger http://www.copyblogger.com/).
I’m sure you can see why some people don’t like posts like that. The headlines are definitive and you are forcefully opinionated. It’s like saying Fact: Deflate IS Faster than Gzip because it is a better headline than Deflate is faster than Gzip when you run this bit of code I hacked up, on my machine, when the whole string is zeros.
There are people out there that look up to you and will parrot what you say. People of more experience will take out what is useful and ignore the rest. But some of the less experienced in your 114,000 readers are at risk of Atwood disease.
In the case of Mads post, I would wager that way more than 50% of the readers of that post would take it as fact that Deflate was faster. And how did Mads post make you a better programmer? All it did was pique your interest. The post itself gave you nothing but that. With your argument me writing any old crap about a subject you happen to be interested in would have made you a better programmer.
It is your blog and your write want to. I bet you could not believe your luck that someone gave you the opportunity to write the headline You’re Reading The World’s Most Dangerous Programming Blog!
With your argument me writing any old crap about a subject you happen to be interested in would have made you a better programmer.
Writing about subjects you enjoy will make you a better programmer, is the point.
The headline The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know is straight out of How to Write Link Bait Headlines 101
I blog to help others and also to learn. As it turns out both are aided by getting folks to actually read the stuff. Please pardon the necessary devices.
I’ve seen the attitude of your blog sucks because it talks about marketing instead of insert-programming-language-here many times, even in fields as remote as finances (is the kind of reaction the guy who wrote Rich dad, poor dad adresses). Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to associate it with code-monkeys, those who think that just by writing code you can create Google and be rich and successful.
Personally, I always considered this blog’s orientation towards human factors what makes it different (and better) from other sites with the trick for making insert-task-here faster in Visual C#++ .Net focus, but being an uncommon point of view, this kind of hostile reaction doesn’t surprise me. Is already hard enough to find not only programmers, but employees in general who can write and communicate ideas in a clear way, and you pretend a programmer to learn marketing, too? That’s crazy talk! 
I have nothing to worry about; I know PHP and Bash scripting, which according to every other programmer and/or developer I’ve ever talked to, neither of which qualify me as a programmer/developer.
So I guess I’m safe reading your blog. Good thing, too, the trolls had me worried that the end of my career in computers was nigh at hand!
rolls eyes
Point is this; the trolls that will tear in to you for taking a holistic approach to development (including marketing, technical writing, copy editing, graphic and interface design, all the things that are needed to make a good program a GOOD PROGRAM) are the same trolls who will tear in to you for your choice of language or, even, your choice of text editor.
Exactly. If you are too stupid to recognize most situations when something is not right, or too naive to realize that people can be wrong, or too fucking lazy to bother looking into it for yourself, then you have NO business writing programs that others will depend on. You are lazy, slow, and ignorant, and I would rather never have to deal with you, especially for support issues.
Take some god damn responsibility for yourself and stop expecting everyone to hold your hand and spoon feed you, and then blaming others when your own ignorance and stupidity gets you into trouble.
It’s called being a mature and responsible adult. Learn when you can. Recognize when you screw up. Get over it.
Keep up the good work, Jeff. The fact you’re inspiring such impassioned comments only means that you’ve got some attention, and you have people scared.
I think the problem is that most programmers have entirely missed the point of programming. I’m a big proponent of technology as a tool, and as a means, but not an end in itself.
Everyone gets scared when their way of life is questioned. That’s essentially what you did on the post that inspired that comment. Too often I see programmers and other technologists fall into a sort of tunnel vision where they begin to worship their trade, and completely ignore the purpose of what they’re doing.
While I do think that in many ways programming can be an art form. There is beautiful and elegant code. When it comes down to it the only people that will ever care about that are other programmers. I think it’s safe to say that in the vast majority of cases other programmers are not your customer, or your user. If you’ve lost focus on who is going to be using your software, and what they’re going to be doing with it then you’re just involved in self gratification.
Jeff,
You write your thoughts and your believes, and I thank you for that!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king – Desiderius Erasmus
I am the blind. You, Spolsky, and others are kings to me.
I am smart enough to understand your vision is not perfect, and may stumble and fall. But I am sure as hell that I am better off following your advice that I would be on my own.
If you tell me to turn right, I will. I will also extend my arms to fell any obstacles I may encounter.
Let these fools complain about your lack of a perfect vision. But please, I beg you: Do not let them take your advice away from me!
I do not hold your responsible for my safety. I just thank your kindness.
…and yet, I am stubborn enough to sometimes go in the opposite direction.
Cheers. I’ve learned tons from you. Recently discussing about your article about XML and why we shouldn’t take it for granted… among another things I have learned Keep up the good work bud
I was, just a few short months ago, of the opinion that Jeff had a greater responsibility to post carefully because of his large readership. Almost every post where he mentions this is the most important or this isn’t very important really, I cringe. What if some naive automaton interprets Jeff literaly? My god, we could be overwhelmed by marketing guys who only use VB, won’t learn xml and don’t unit test!
I now believe that if you spend the whole article trying to be completely correct and careful on all points, you really can’t make a point. Would you write 4000 lines of carefully constructed code to avoid a condition where the server would have to be on fire for the error to occur? Could you imagine the size of your favorite coding book with examples if every example had to be completely secure, run on and be optimized for the absolute best performance on every platform (especially those not invented yet), and be a shining example of idealistic ivory tower code? Oh and simple and understandable, that’s crucial right?
It’s just like when you hand off your favorite tome of programming knowledge to an impressionable new hire: This is a good book, but use your head.
I still worry a little about the introverts and conformists. There’s an awful lot of those kind of programmers and they certainly aren’t going to call Jeff out or dare to disagree. And what if Joel has a conflicting opinion? Maybe marketing is safer, much stronger herd mentality there…
On second thought (after reading the comments) just do what Joel does and turn off the comments lol
That’s kinda’ crazy. Blogs (esp technical ones) promote discussion and invite readers to take up the challenge of proving or disproving ideas if they so desire. In no way should anyone take a blog entry as fact.
Of course, I’m not stating anything most people don’t already know.