Although you may not have heard anything from Mike Zamansky lately, he’s still blogging—mostly about teaching—and maintaining an active presence on the Web. He just retired from Hunter so perhaps he’ll find time to enlighten us with a Using Emacs video or two.
In the meantime, he has an interesting post on the worst practices video channel. We’re always being inundated with videos pushing this or that best practice but Brett Slatkin has turned that on its head and presents us with a series of “worst practices” videos. That’s not as silly as it seems. For example, one video features Leah Culvert confessing that she often debugs with print statements. But wait. We all do that sometimes and it’s often, or at least occasionally, appropriate.
That’s the point. All of these Worst Practices are sometimes the right thing™. As Zamansky says, there are no silver bullets; no universal best practices that always apply. Yes, most often a debugger is the proper tool to use but sometimes a simple print statement or two does the same job more quickly and easily.
There are currently eight videos on the channel and they’re all things that
- are universally considered worst practices
- we all do occasionally.
The thing about the videos is how quotidian they are. All of these so called worst practices are things we all sometimes do and are probably better off for. In any event, the videos are entertaining and worth a few minutes of your time. They’re all about 5 minutes long so it’s easy to fit one or two in when you have an idle moment.