Is it really tempting for people? They've given me too many headaches when I've had to reformat or add functionality to files.
Unless it's a simple single use script that fit on the computer screen, I don't feel like global variables would ever be tempting, unless it's for constants.
Most people suck at software engineering.
Plus, there's always the temptation to do it the shitty way and "fix it later" (which never happens).
You pay your technical debt. One way or another.
It's way worse than any gangster.
Not if you leave the project soon enough. It's like tech debt chicken.
Then, at your new job, you see garbage code and wonder what dumbass would put global variables everywhere
amen
Plus, there's always the temptation to do it the shitty way and "fix it later"
double amen
Rarely have I ever actually had consequences for my sins, which tends to be why I don't go back and fix them....
If tech debt weight is felt in any way, it tends to get fixed. If it's not felt, it's just incredibly easy to forget and disregard.
(This is mostly me not learning my lesson well enough from my time being on Tech Debt: The Team. I do try and figure out the correct way to do things, but at the end of the day, I get paid to do what the boss wants as cheaply as possible, not what's right :/ money dgaf about best practices until someone gets sued for malpractice, but on that logic, maybe the tech debt piper just hasn't returned for payment from me yet... Only time will tell)
What industry do you work in?
Fair point, I work in a consumer facing, fast turn around, short lived code project industry. Not a typical software project with long life cycles.
These practices would almost certainly bite my company in the ass if we had to maintain anything for longer than year.
Occasionally, we do have to support a client for multiple years, and everytime it's a hilarious shit show trying to figure out how to keep all the project dependencies up to date. This is likely platform tech debt, and would be the beginning of the problem if we didn't have the privilege of being able to start over from scratch code-wise for each client's new order.
I guess I'm just in a lucky spot in the programmer pool where tech debt literally doesn't hit me as hard as it usually does others, and I just couldn't identify that before now lol
Instead of saying tech debt isn't that bad, my tune will change to something else. Like I said, I was on a team at one point that had a worse than usual tech debt problem, and it was unworkably stressful to deal with. Im guessing that experience is more typical of being near tech debt than my other experiences.
Good on you for acknowledging that. 👍
I've fixed 20 year old issues that could kill people.
Different requirements. Different solutions.
That's why it's great to be an engineer!
If you’re smart you do it the quick and easy way and leave the company before it bites you in the ass. Only suckers stay with the same company for more than a few years
This community makes more sense when you realize the majority of users are CS students.
Pointers hard!! LOL
Hey, don't you group me in with people who have had a small amount of real training!
They've given me too many headaches...
I.e. you did use them, but learned the hard way why you shouldn't.
Very likely OP is a student, or entry-level programmer, and is avoiding them because they were told to, and just haven't done enough refactoring & debugging or worked on large enough code bases to 'get' it yet.
Is it really tempting for people? They've given me too many headaches when I've had to reformat or add functionality to files.
I don’t get it either. Why would you ever feel the need for them to begin with?
Just create a global object and stuff your variable in there. Now you have a global singleton and that's not a purely bad practice :D
Just call it "state management" and nobody will even care.
Important to contain all your mess to one side of the room, makes it easier to manage
So you saying, just the tip?
Real enterprise programmers know that everything should be on the stack... so they declare a List《void*》 in main.
But we might need to add more features in the future so it might not just be a list in a few years. Better encapsulate it in a few layers of abstractions just to be safe.
Real enterprise programmers know you can get another job in the next year or two so fuck best practice
Obligatory, mutable global variables are evil.
As opposed to immutable variables
*confused screaming*
You can do better, define intergalactic variables that share the same memory location across multiple programs so you can seamlessly pass variables from one to the next.
The ONE TRUE CONSTANT; even with an infinite universe, the value is the same in all of them.
Is that you... Windows 95?
Singletons:
Me: O_O;
Is it an orgy if multiple global variables are used in a multi threaded code?
I've once had a course involving programming and the lecturer rewrote the code, which we were usually using at our institute, making ALL variables global. - Yes, also each and every loop counter and iterator. 🤪
There’s no way you teach a uni course and do this kind of thing unless to demonstrate poor practice/run time difference. Are you sure you were paying attention?
Yes. He really thought it was efficient and would avoid errors if literally all variables were defined in a single Matlab function he called at the beginning of the script. We students all thought: "Man, are you serious?" As we didn't want to debug such a mess, in our code, we ignored what he was doing and kept using local variables.
Ah I misread I thought it was specifically a programming course. I can expect this from a math prof.
Yes, it was a course on finite deformation material models. And no, you do really, really not want to declare each and every variable in your material subroutine globally for the whole finite element program.
I've seen two teachers do this, both of them mathematics professors who teach programming for the extra cash. One uses C, the other Pascal.
"But what if I put the whole program into a class and then made it a class wide variable?"
Sounds like the piece of legacy software I have do deal with.
I am not a programmer who knows how to program. I know this because global variables are how I fix most the issue I run into, but are constantly told this wrong.
I asked stable diffusion for a photo-realistic version of this image. This isn't what I had in mind
Me putting everything in 'public:'
Exhibitionist Devs be like.
Our Father, who art in Microsoft HQ,
hallowed be thy naming conventions;
thy architecture;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in Linus Tech Tips.
Give us this day our daily StackOverflow.
And forgive us our 'sploits,
as we forgive those who trespass against our user stories.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from a thicket of global variables.
For thine is the irritating project manager, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Or at least 7 years until obsolescence.
Amen.
the meme is spreading
Nothing wrong with global variables.
If anyone asks just say it's the singleton pattern.
This, but with not making unit tests instead of global variables.
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