5 ms·

I think it puts too much blame on the software developers. Agreed, over-engineering is usually the developers fault. But the fact we don't take time to investig

by kabes 8y ago

I think it puts too much blame on the software developers. Agreed, over-engineering is usually the developers fault. But the fact we don't take time to investigate issues, rather work around them or half-ready stuff gets pushed into the market is rarely the developers fault. These things are decided by management.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Totally, 100% agreed. Sure, there are a lot of developers who don't care about quality. Usually, they don't care because they're here to do their job and get paid, not to make an art piece. Which is to say, they would care if it was a part of their job, but it isn't, because of business-level decisions.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > there are a lot of developers who don't care about quality And the underlying meta problem is that the people who are supposed to be responsible for figuring out which is which haven't got the faintest idea how to tell. Compound this with the fact that most management structures are still based on factory-assembly floor management where figuring out who wasn't turning the lever as fast as they guy next to him was the most important metric and you end up with corporate structures where trying to figure out which developers are better than which other developers actually has the opposite effect than the one they want.
- ken 8y ago
  This is going to sound defensive, but: is the problem really with developers? In my experience as a developer, we've never been given the necessary resources (time, QA access, specs that don't change every day, sample data, redundant hardware, etc) to build a reliable system. Managers always pushed me to have something that looks mostly-working, and shipped by the artificial deadline, and argue that any known bugs or limitations are not important enough to fix before the next round of new features. It's not so much that I'm not required to care, but that I'm not allowed to care. I get better food at Canlis than McD's, too, but given the time/ingredient/recipe constraints, even the Canlis chef would struggle to make something great if thrown into a McD's kitchen.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > It's not so much that I'm not required to care, but that I'm not allowed to care. This was my point, mostly. It's not a problem with developers, it's a problem with business priorities. I agree with your experience.
thoughtspile 8y ago
As a developer, I would feel shifting the blame with this) I am writing a follow-up on how to do better, though!
neuromantik8086 8y ago
This perspective reminds of a few answers to the Quora question "Do programmers who write bad code know that they are writing bad code?", which I was looking at last Friday when dealing with a particularly poorly coded app. For further edification/amusement: http://qr.ae/TUGpLF http://qr.ae/TUGpLF http://qr.ae/TUGpL5 http://qr.ae/TUGpL5
mmjaa 8y ago
Nope. There are still bad developers, i.e. those who can't manage themselves. And, just because someone "thinks" they can manage, doesn't mean they can manage. The only metric that matters: number of USERS. Good developers have thousands of them. Great developers, millions.
- thoughtspile 8y ago
  What about non-public / embedded software then?
  - mmjaa 8y ago
    Ultimately, they have users too. However the context is general application development - certainly, special-case users have their value as well...
- ken 8y ago
  By that metric, two of the best kinds of developers are virus writers, and people who made the insecure systems that they infect.
  - mmjaa 8y ago
    The 'user' of a virus is the virus author - not the person running the software. A user is someone who attains some gain from running software. So, no, this would be a very low user count.

by kabes 8y ago

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Totally, 100% agreed. Sure, there are a lot of developers who don't care about quality. Usually, they don't care because they're here to do their job and get paid, not to make an art piece. Which is to say, they would care if it was a part of their job, but it isn't, because of business-level decisions.

commandlinefan 8y ago
> there are a lot of developers who don't care about quality And the underlying meta problem is that the people who are supposed to be responsible for figuring out which is which haven't got the faintest idea how to tell. Compound this with the fact that most management structures are still based on factory-assembly floor management where figuring out who wasn't turning the lever as fast as they guy next to him was the most important metric and you end up with corporate structures where trying to figure out which developers are better than which other developers actually has the opposite effect than the one they want.
ken 8y ago
This is going to sound defensive, but: is the problem really with developers? In my experience as a developer, we've never been given the necessary resources (time, QA access, specs that don't change every day, sample data, redundant hardware, etc) to build a reliable system. Managers always pushed me to have something that looks mostly-working, and shipped by the artificial deadline, and argue that any known bugs or limitations are not important enough to fix before the next round of new features. It's not so much that I'm not required to care, but that I'm not allowed to care. I get better food at Canlis than McD's, too, but given the time/ingredient/recipe constraints, even the Canlis chef would struggle to make something great if thrown into a McD's kitchen.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > It's not so much that I'm not required to care, but that I'm not allowed to care. This was my point, mostly. It's not a problem with developers, it's a problem with business priorities. I agree with your experience.

thoughtspile 8y ago

As a developer, I would feel shifting the blame with this) I am writing a follow-up on how to do better, though!

neuromantik8086 8y ago

This perspective reminds of a few answers to the Quora question "Do programmers who write bad code know that they are writing bad code?", which I was looking at last Friday when dealing with a particularly poorly coded app. For further edification/amusement: http://qr.ae/TUGpLF http://qr.ae/TUGpLF http://qr.ae/TUGpL5 http://qr.ae/TUGpL5

mmjaa 8y ago

Nope. There are still bad developers, i.e. those who can't manage themselves. And, just because someone "thinks" they can manage, doesn't mean they can manage. The only metric that matters: number of USERS. Good developers have thousands of them. Great developers, millions.

thoughtspile 8y ago
What about non-public / embedded software then?
- mmjaa 8y ago
  Ultimately, they have users too. However the context is general application development - certainly, special-case users have their value as well...
ken 8y ago
By that metric, two of the best kinds of developers are virus writers, and people who made the insecure systems that they infect.
- mmjaa 8y ago
  The 'user' of a virus is the virus author - not the person running the software. A user is someone who attains some gain from running software. So, no, this would be a very low user count.