Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Can We Rank Developers ?" video.

  1. Unpopular opinion: you don't need unit tests, you only need integration tests that cover the code so well that not even mutation testing can find any untested code. When you only test externally visible behavior, you can always rewrite the whole unit/library/module and when the new implementation passes those integration tests, it will be at least as good as the old implementation. Unit testing can pinpoint to the error in the implementation faster but unit testing bitrots faster.
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  2. I agree that the article makes a major mistake of thinking that functional programming is the end goal. Functional programming has some pros and some cons. Good software engineering requires considering both pros and cons for every decision made for the project, especially when it comes to choosing the language to implement the project. For practical software engineering, I've yet to see highly successful functional programming projects. Do you think we have any highly successful operating systems, web browsers, office suites, web servers, NAS servers or AI systems written in any functional programming language? I think the most successful project is Emacs and I think that's pretty much simpler system than full operating systems or web browsers or GPU drivers. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
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  3. 25:40 The closest we have for "how has software programming changed in last 10 years" is the AI tools such as Copilot that we can currently use. Not yet groundbraking change but the signs are already visible that AI can really change things in near future (within 5 years).
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