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It would be okay if prototypes would be prototypes, but in the software field prototypes are too often taken into production. It's like a designer giving you a
by cm3 10y ago
It would be okay if prototypes would be prototypes, but in the software field prototypes are too often taken into production. It's like a designer giving you a small model how they envision it. You don't expect to shrink yourself and live in the model house out of paper. It should be the same with software. Just recall the struggle with Twitter's MVP that failed to be available. Maybe we should differentiate between builders, designers and visionaries in the software field.
- mmartinson 10y agoI agree that there is a lot of space for distinction between the kind of work that people are doing in the software field, but I see prototypes being thrown into production as a hugely positive thing, not a problem. Part of the beauty of the current startup landscape is feasibility of throwing a working prototype written by a junior, garbage code and all, into production to see if it gets any traction. It costs little money, offers a chance to hungry juniors to prove themselves and later drives the demand for senior engineers to clean up or rewrite the codebase into something that can scale.
- cm3 10y agoIf the org plans for and provides the resources to engineer it properly from scratch, yes, it can be good idea. I've only encountered the scenario where the original developer was only allowed to band-aid patch it repeatedly.