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> only to be told to do it exactly the same way the old system did it. Early in my career this pissed me off too. As I matured I learned that there were often

by josho 10y ago

> only to be told to do it exactly the same way the old system did it. Early in my career this pissed me off too. As I matured I learned that there were often valid reasons to do it the same way. E.g. External systems accessed the DB directly for reporting, special cases meant my proposed design would be fragile, etc. To the younger folks here, when you encounter this realize constraints exist that you must workaround. If you feel strongly enough to push back then first seek out some senior resources to dig for a deeper understanding before going ahead and proposing an alternate.

hinkley 10y ago
Problems that nobody talks about never get fixed. If you give up the there is no feedback and no news is good news. And one of the worst technical failures I worked on was a project where they insisted on reports from live data, and put little bits of report data in every response from the server. They couldn't grasp why the performance was so underwhelming. Every index in your tables adds time to every insert and update operation, and often slightly stale data is close enough for most users and can be pre-calculated on an interval. If you get the bright idea that measuring how many people are online or exactly how many dollars you made this month, then you will have fewer users and make less money because of it. Use reporting tables. Most people shouldn't be writing into your data anyway and if they are, run away. Make the reporting tables your external API, and then you can add or modify columns, split or combine tables whenever you want.
logfromblammo 10y ago
The only reason you really need is that the customer wants it done that way. As I grow older, I become less enthusiastic about protecting other people from the potential consequences of their decisions. At this point, I will still warn about those consequences, but only so that my company will get contracted again later, to do the thing I suggested in the first place. I: You could speed up this workflow by doing X. They: No... It needs to look exactly like this paper form. I: Your wish is my command. [3 months pass] They: We want you to change this form by doing almost exactly X. Boss: [holds out hand, rubs fingers together] They: [writes fat check] I: Your wish is my command. They: Just make sure that it still looks like the form when I print it. I: [dying a little inside] Your wish is stu... still my command. [3 months pass] They: The printed forms are crap. We want you to export the data to an Excel spreadsheet. Boss: [holds out hand, rubs fingers together] They: [writes fat check] I: Your wish is my command. [continue in this fashion until your death]

by josho 10y ago

hinkley 10y ago

Problems that nobody talks about never get fixed. If you give up the there is no feedback and no news is good news. And one of the worst technical failures I worked on was a project where they insisted on reports from live data, and put little bits of report data in every response from the server. They couldn't grasp why the performance was so underwhelming. Every index in your tables adds time to every insert and update operation, and often slightly stale data is close enough for most users and can be pre-calculated on an interval. If you get the bright idea that measuring how many people are online or exactly how many dollars you made this month, then you will have fewer users and make less money because of it. Use reporting tables. Most people shouldn't be writing into your data anyway and if they are, run away. Make the reporting tables your external API, and then you can add or modify columns, split or combine tables whenever you want.

logfromblammo 10y ago

The only reason you really need is that the customer wants it done that way. As I grow older, I become less enthusiastic about protecting other people from the potential consequences of their decisions. At this point, I will still warn about those consequences, but only so that my company will get contracted again later, to do the thing I suggested in the first place. I: You could speed up this workflow by doing X. They: No... It needs to look exactly like this paper form. I: Your wish is my command. [3 months pass] They: We want you to change this form by doing almost exactly X. Boss: [holds out hand, rubs fingers together] They: [writes fat check] I: Your wish is my command. They: Just make sure that it still looks like the form when I print it. I: [dying a little inside] Your wish is stu... still my command. [3 months pass] They: The printed forms are crap. We want you to export the data to an Excel spreadsheet. Boss: [holds out hand, rubs fingers together] They: [writes fat check] I: Your wish is my command. [continue in this fashion until your death]