4 ms·

This piece is chock full of ridiculous advice. >> “I’m making a generic version of…” >> It means: I don’t understand the constraints of the actual problem, so

This piece is chock full of ridiculous advice. >> “I’m making a generic version of…” >> It means: I don’t understand the constraints of the actual problem, so I’m going to design an even bigger problem that we have no way of verifying the efficacy of. Yes, just tell the non-technical managers that "generic" means technicians have no idea what they are talking about. No matter what the problem is. That should make for a better world. Whereas "refactoring" is only a "yellow flag". Run away.

JonRB 9y ago
This was my reaction. This article seems to be training people to get their engineers to devlop completely unmaintainable projects, and generally make the managers trust the engineers less.
Tloewald 9y ago
I think it's healthy to be skeptical of people claiming to be solving a more general problem than the actual problem at hand (which is a large fraction of the advice in this article). Unfortunately, a non-technical manager trying to drill down into an argument about cross-platform, generic, or framework solutions to problems is quickly going to get lost and/or piss off engineers.
- xyrnoble 9y ago
  Non-technical managers often fail to account for the Inventor's Paradox [1]. They assume more general solutions will necessarily require more resources. This is often not the case even if you ignore the resources which would be allocated to problems (solved in the general case) that you do not yet have. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_paradox
aatchb 9y ago
Indeed. I have colleagues that end up writing the same god damn code over and over again because they fail to appreciate the idea of 'generic' code and 'frameworks'.
rimliu 9y ago
To quote ironic remark from "Uncle" Bob Martin: > Why do we write the code that slows us down? > And the answer to that is "Well, because we had to go fast! https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY?t=956 https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY?t=956
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Which is probably a modern version of the classic Blaise Pascal's quote: "I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." https://www.quora.com/Who-wrote-the-quote-If-I-had-more-time-I-would-have-written-you-a-shorter-letter https://www.quora.com/Who-wrote-the-quote-If-I-had-more-time...

JonRB 9y ago

This was my reaction. This article seems to be training people to get their engineers to devlop completely unmaintainable projects, and generally make the managers trust the engineers less.

Tloewald 9y ago

I think it's healthy to be skeptical of people claiming to be solving a more general problem than the actual problem at hand (which is a large fraction of the advice in this article). Unfortunately, a non-technical manager trying to drill down into an argument about cross-platform, generic, or framework solutions to problems is quickly going to get lost and/or piss off engineers.

xyrnoble 9y ago
Non-technical managers often fail to account for the Inventor's Paradox [1]. They assume more general solutions will necessarily require more resources. This is often not the case even if you ignore the resources which would be allocated to problems (solved in the general case) that you do not yet have. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_paradox

aatchb 9y ago

Indeed. I have colleagues that end up writing the same god damn code over and over again because they fail to appreciate the idea of 'generic' code and 'frameworks'.

rimliu 9y ago

To quote ironic remark from "Uncle" Bob Martin: > Why do we write the code that slows us down? > And the answer to that is "Well, because we had to go fast! https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY?t=956 https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY?t=956

jaclaz 9y ago
Which is probably a modern version of the classic Blaise Pascal's quote: "I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." https://www.quora.com/Who-wrote-the-quote-If-I-had-more-time-I-would-have-written-you-a-shorter-letter https://www.quora.com/Who-wrote-the-quote-If-I-had-more-time...