3 ms·

"lifetime cost of software" means what? 99% of the software we write is obsolete within 2 years. We should not confuse big enterprise, long term support softwar

by jlg23 11y ago

"lifetime cost of software" means what? 99% of the software we write is obsolete within 2 years. We should not confuse big enterprise, long term support software with modern web development. IMHO, if you want to invest into software viable on the long term, rather spend your time writing functional tests and good documentation so the current implementation can easily be replaced with a new one that uses the then hip framework. EDIT, to make my point clear: The surgeon comparison is not valid because a surgeon deals with a much longer lifetime than not only the average but most software projects.

zeemonkee3 11y ago
> "lifetime cost of software" means what? 99% of the software we write is obsolete within 2 years More like, developers change jobs that often. So it's no longer your problem.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Personally, I have terrible pangs of guilt if I know I leave a mess behind me. I've had to suffer fixing enough of someone elses messes to know what a timebomb of anger and frustration that is.
fsloth 11y ago
Sure, if the software gets totally junked in a couple years then lifetime costs of the implementation become less of an issue. I work in an environment that's quite lean, but where deployment can take up to a year and lifetime is measured at the decade level so in my case the more traditional 'implementation is 10% of total costs' actually applies.
falcolas 11y ago
Given the cost of abandonment and lost sales due to slow page rendering (there's a lot that's been written about that), even a 3% loss of conversions due to slow frontend code over 2 years is a lot of money. For a million-dollars-a-year business, that's upwards 6 months worth of a developer's time. [0] 3% based on how many people will abandon a page that takes more than 1 second to render: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1 https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1

by jlg23 11y ago

zeemonkee3 11y ago

> "lifetime cost of software" means what? 99% of the software we write is obsolete within 2 years More like, developers change jobs that often. So it's no longer your problem.

fsloth 11y ago
Personally, I have terrible pangs of guilt if I know I leave a mess behind me. I've had to suffer fixing enough of someone elses messes to know what a timebomb of anger and frustration that is.

fsloth 11y ago

Sure, if the software gets totally junked in a couple years then lifetime costs of the implementation become less of an issue. I work in an environment that's quite lean, but where deployment can take up to a year and lifetime is measured at the decade level so in my case the more traditional 'implementation is 10% of total costs' actually applies.

falcolas 11y ago

Given the cost of abandonment and lost sales due to slow page rendering (there's a lot that's been written about that), even a 3% loss of conversions due to slow frontend code over 2 years is a lot of money. For a million-dollars-a-year business, that's upwards 6 months worth of a developer's time. [0] 3% based on how many people will abandon a page that takes more than 1 second to render: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1 https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1