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Sound advice and well written, even if its old its a nice collection of thinks to think about. I wonder if "people" will start understanding #17 (No project is

Sound advice and well written, even if its old its a nice collection of thinks to think about. I wonder if "people" will start understanding #17 (No project is ever simple) some day.

megamark16 17y ago
It would sure make freelance work a little more pleasant. How many times have you heard "This was supposed to be a 3 week project...that was a year ago"? You'll probably never hear something like "Well, we thought it was going to take 2 years and require a mainframe, but we banged it out in 6 months running on Postgresql."
- MaysonL 17y ago
  I have heard this though, from the designers of a system (about 4.4 years through a five-year research grant): "You're going to implement how much of this in 6 months?" and after I told them, "Can't be done! Flat out impossible." It took me 6 months and a couple days, working 40 hour weeks.
sophacles 17y ago
Im of 2 minds on this. 1. It may be our own fault -- A lot of things have known solutions, and if they aren't simple we haven't created good enough tools/abstractions. This doesn't apply to truely new stuff, but I could argue that a lot of stuff isn't that new. 2. Absolutely, but so often its like the old kung fu movies jokes. The chinese being spoken is 3 words, and the translation is 3 lines, and the inverse. It makes a naive sort of sense that it should be a simple to do if it can be described simply. (of course karma can be built by letting hte user over describe some things and having them done realtime, some are then more likely to beleive you if you say "its harder than it sounds")
loup-vaillant 17y ago
I think it takes an actual "simple" project. Mine[1] was supposed to be trivial. Someone who comes now an see the 350 lines of code may think it was easy. It wasn't. It's not even complete, and it took me several weeks of free time (much of which was spent simplifying my code). [1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm

Sound advice and well written, even if its old its a nice collection of thinks to think about. I wonder if "people" will start understanding #17 (No project is ever simple) some day.

megamark16 17y ago

It would sure make freelance work a little more pleasant. How many times have you heard "This was supposed to be a 3 week project...that was a year ago"? You'll probably never hear something like "Well, we thought it was going to take 2 years and require a mainframe, but we banged it out in 6 months running on Postgresql."

MaysonL 17y ago
I have heard this though, from the designers of a system (about 4.4 years through a five-year research grant): "You're going to implement how much of this in 6 months?" and after I told them, "Can't be done! Flat out impossible." It took me 6 months and a couple days, working 40 hour weeks.

sophacles 17y ago

Im of 2 minds on this. 1. It may be our own fault -- A lot of things have known solutions, and if they aren't simple we haven't created good enough tools/abstractions. This doesn't apply to truely new stuff, but I could argue that a lot of stuff isn't that new. 2. Absolutely, but so often its like the old kung fu movies jokes. The chinese being spoken is 3 words, and the translation is 3 lines, and the inverse. It makes a naive sort of sense that it should be a simple to do if it can be described simply. (of course karma can be built by letting hte user over describe some things and having them done realtime, some are then more likely to beleive you if you say "its harder than it sounds")

loup-vaillant 17y ago

I think it takes an actual "simple" project. Mine[1] was supposed to be trivial. Someone who comes now an see the 350 lines of code may think it was easy. It wasn't. It's not even complete, and it took me several weeks of free time (much of which was spent simplifying my code). [1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm