5 ms·

Sorry to sound cynical but... have you ever been introduced to the concept of "deadline"?

by Pamar 7y ago

jodrellblank 7y ago
I really want a way to filter out comments which boil down to a snarky “SOME people can’t do this”. Yes yes, have points, well done, but it’s a boring low effort class of comments that applies to nigh every single idea ever, and skips the interesting or important bits - in this case whether it produces better software or helps understand things - in favour of a cheap vote grab. “It’s not universally applicable” - no, nothing is. and you don’t sound cynical you sound like you’re trying to dismiss and status grab, like someone talking about the “out here in the real world”.
- Pamar 7y ago
  I know it sounds snarky, and I am sorry (I even tried to apologize preventively, but I was in a hurry and this probably was taken as extra sarcasm on my part). Still, my point stands: I am not sure if this is really a matter of “SOME people can’t do this”, I suspect it is the other way around: “SOME people can do this... because they are working on free software, on their own personal project, on programs or systems that do not have any TTM aspect”. And it is not just a matter of "deadlines" either: if your code is part of some bigger system you may not have the chance to reimplement things from scratch not because you don't have time, but because you could impact someone else using your library/module/API. In other words, this approach is eminently laudable, but in my experience does not scale in most cases.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It does work somewhat under light pressure. Under high deadline pressure it obviously can't, but I'd argue that if a company is slave-driving programmers, code is going to be garbage and development will start slowing down due to accumulated technical debt. > if your code is part of some bigger system you may not have the chance to reimplement things from scratch not because you don't have time, but because you could impact someone else using your library/module/API. In this case, if your code is used by someone else, you can't do that. The trick is not releasing your code "out there" until after you've done several rewriting passes on it. In the cases I've done that in professional context, I worked on a feature branch. I would occasionally rebase it on top of master, to stay current with rest of the product, but nobody ever looked at my feature branch until I've done a few rounds on the code, declared it's ready for integration, and issued a merge request.
- Pamar 7y ago
  I got 3 downvotes to my original (terse) post and 3 upvotes to the more articulate answer to you. I suppose this should teach me to wait until I have time enough to write a proper post, next time.
klyrs 7y ago
Hahaha, nice one. Cynical answer: I wish we could ask Ken that. My situation isn't typical. To put it in common parlance, this is how I nucleate my 20% projects, and personal projects. Which, once released, almost never require significant maintenance because of the care and attention spent upfront. I'm more than capable of whipping out a prototype that will do the job and incur technical debt. And I'm upfront about tradeoffs in planning, and meticulous about the rare deadline I get saddled with.

Sorry to sound cynical but... have you ever been introduced to the concept of "deadline"?

by Pamar 7y ago

Sorry to sound cynical but... have you ever been introduced to the concept of "deadline"?

I really want a way to filter out comments which boil down to a snarky “SOME people can’t do this”. Yes yes, have points, well done, but it’s a boring low effort class of comments that applies to nigh every single idea ever, and skips the interesting or important bits - in this case whether it produces better software or helps understand things - in favour of a cheap vote grab. “It’s not universally applicable” - no, nothing is. and you don’t sound cynical you sound like you’re trying to dismiss and status grab, like someone talking about the “out here in the real world”.

Pamar 7y ago
I know it sounds snarky, and I am sorry (I even tried to apologize preventively, but I was in a hurry and this probably was taken as extra sarcasm on my part). Still, my point stands: I am not sure if this is really a matter of “SOME people can’t do this”, I suspect it is the other way around: “SOME people can do this... because they are working on free software, on their own personal project, on programs or systems that do not have any TTM aspect”. And it is not just a matter of "deadlines" either: if your code is part of some bigger system you may not have the chance to reimplement things from scratch not because you don't have time, but because you could impact someone else using your library/module/API. In other words, this approach is eminently laudable, but in my experience does not scale in most cases.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It does work somewhat under light pressure. Under high deadline pressure it obviously can't, but I'd argue that if a company is slave-driving programmers, code is going to be garbage and development will start slowing down due to accumulated technical debt. > if your code is part of some bigger system you may not have the chance to reimplement things from scratch not because you don't have time, but because you could impact someone else using your library/module/API. In this case, if your code is used by someone else, you can't do that. The trick is not releasing your code "out there" until after you've done several rewriting passes on it. In the cases I've done that in professional context, I worked on a feature branch. I would occasionally rebase it on top of master, to stay current with rest of the product, but nobody ever looked at my feature branch until I've done a few rounds on the code, declared it's ready for integration, and issued a merge request.
Pamar 7y ago
I got 3 downvotes to my original (terse) post and 3 upvotes to the more articulate answer to you. I suppose this should teach me to wait until I have time enough to write a proper post, next time.

klyrs 7y ago

Hahaha, nice one. Cynical answer: I wish we could ask Ken that. My situation isn't typical. To put it in common parlance, this is how I nucleate my 20% projects, and personal projects. Which, once released, almost never require significant maintenance because of the care and attention spent upfront. I'm more than capable of whipping out a prototype that will do the job and incur technical debt. And I'm upfront about tradeoffs in planning, and meticulous about the rare deadline I get saddled with.