5 ms·

There is a saying, "real writing is rewriting." Ideally the final draft is something that has been very aggressively refactored, multiple times, with input fro

by biztos 8y ago

There is a saying, "real writing is rewriting." Ideally the final draft is something that has been very aggressively refactored, multiple times, with input from a Refactoring Engineer. (Did I just invent a new job category? I don't think there's currently any equivalent of an Editor in the Software Engineering world; code review is a chaotic approximation.) Unfortunately there is usually pressure, and maybe also desire, to just make it work, maybe with tests, and move on to the next thing, at least in companies.

LoSboccacc 8y ago
"Build one to throw away" - the mythical man month
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  "Can't we just spruce up the working prototype and deploy it to production?" -- Management
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    If it only were an actual question...
    - LoSboccacc 8y ago
      I've learned in time to never make a working ux in my prototypes. just raw data showing the innards working, and that's it. functional or pretty ux just gets shipped in prod no matter what.
ilovetux 8y ago
I believe that a Refactoring Engineer would be similar to a contractor specializing in performance, security or systems optimization. I've had the pleasure of working with a couple of these people, and I have to say that I felt an initial (pride|arrogance)-based resistance but they were all friendly and had some really valuable insights especially since their expertise seemed to be lower-level than mine and they were able to look at working code and find places to improve. In essence I agree with you that this should be an on-staff role, but perhaps the reason we are not seeing this is that the job is usually fairly quick (a couple of weeks/months) and for the business its hard to justify a full-time staff member to perform this service. There is also something to be said for how people in this role are able to gather a wealth of experience by working on a high number of code bases instead of being stuck continuously working on the same few software projects all year.

by biztos 8y ago

LoSboccacc 8y ago

"Build one to throw away" - the mythical man month

stronglikedan 8y ago
"Can't we just spruce up the working prototype and deploy it to production?" -- Management
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  If it only were an actual question...
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    I've learned in time to never make a working ux in my prototypes. just raw data showing the innards working, and that's it. functional or pretty ux just gets shipped in prod no matter what.

ilovetux 8y ago

I believe that a Refactoring Engineer would be similar to a contractor specializing in performance, security or systems optimization. I've had the pleasure of working with a couple of these people, and I have to say that I felt an initial (pride|arrogance)-based resistance but they were all friendly and had some really valuable insights especially since their expertise seemed to be lower-level than mine and they were able to look at working code and find places to improve. In essence I agree with you that this should be an on-staff role, but perhaps the reason we are not seeing this is that the job is usually fairly quick (a couple of weeks/months) and for the business its hard to justify a full-time staff member to perform this service. There is also something to be said for how people in this role are able to gather a wealth of experience by working on a high number of code bases instead of being stuck continuously working on the same few software projects all year.