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"Even systems with well-defined architectures are prone to structural erosion. The relentless onslaught of changing requirements that any successful system attr

"Even systems with well-defined architectures are prone to structural erosion. The relentless onslaught of changing requirements that any successful system attracts can gradually undermine its structure. Systems that were once tidy become overgrown as PIECEMEAL GROWTH gradually allows elements of the system to sprawl in an uncontrolled fashion." http://www.laputan.org/mud/ http://www.laputan.org/mud/ There is that old adage "perfect is the enemy of the good", well I would argue that "working is the enemy of the good" as well. When your "average" engineer spends 2 to 3 years at a company how often do they have to pick up the messes they make? Rarely? Never? It doesn't pay to be a good citizen in that case - it pays to be (as another poster pointed out) fast. > The time, patience and level of enthusiasm required to learn the craft to the level you can develop a piece of software that is well-designed, performant, easy to reason about and an overall joy to work with is about 10 to 100x what the average engineer is willing to put in. If software is hard, and average people are not ~willing~ to put in the work to make it less so, doesn't that make them lazy? Willfully and willingly lazy at that. > Number 3: Software Engineers are like Surgeons, except the twelve years of training is received on the job. Look around you,how many engineers do you know who's code you would be willing to bet your life on? The problem is that every engineer thinks they are a surgeon (and a good one at that) when many of them wouldn't even make good nurses.

james_s_tayler 7y ago
It doesn't make them lazy. You're not lazy for not wanting to hike the Oregon Trail. No, it simply makes good systems brutally improbable. Re: Surgeons - precisely the point. A perfect result demands a high level of skill which the average developer has nowhere near. As a result there are lots of casualties.
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  > It doesn't make them lazy. You're not lazy for not wanting to hike the Oregon Trail. If I walk the 1/4 of a mile flat loop at the park down the street from my house every day and call my self a hiker I would be a liar. Really were talking about Dunning–Kruger, "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent". I go back to "stupid" as the clear winner, and add in that they are too lazy to get out of that rut (put in the work) and that the title "engineer" becomes a willful or delusional lie. > Re: Surgeons - precisely the point. A perfect result demands a high level of skill which the average developer has nowhere near. As a result there are lots of casualties. To your earlier point, we give everyone with a pre med degree a scalpel and a patient with a traumatic brain injury and say "go" were going to have a lot of bodies. The case is clear that we are far too tolerant of bad code and bad engineers, and we don't have roles like "podiatry" or "nurse" to demote people down to where they can contribute and we can limit their harm.
  - nradov 7y ago
    In healthcare, podiatry and nursing aren't demotions. They are entirely separate career tracks from medicine. Most nurses and podiatrists do those jobs because they want to, not because they failed at becoming physicians.

james_s_tayler 7y ago

It doesn't make them lazy. You're not lazy for not wanting to hike the Oregon Trail. No, it simply makes good systems brutally improbable. Re: Surgeons - precisely the point. A perfect result demands a high level of skill which the average developer has nowhere near. As a result there are lots of casualties.

zer00eyz 7y ago
> It doesn't make them lazy. You're not lazy for not wanting to hike the Oregon Trail. If I walk the 1/4 of a mile flat loop at the park down the street from my house every day and call my self a hiker I would be a liar. Really were talking about Dunning–Kruger, "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent". I go back to "stupid" as the clear winner, and add in that they are too lazy to get out of that rut (put in the work) and that the title "engineer" becomes a willful or delusional lie. > Re: Surgeons - precisely the point. A perfect result demands a high level of skill which the average developer has nowhere near. As a result there are lots of casualties. To your earlier point, we give everyone with a pre med degree a scalpel and a patient with a traumatic brain injury and say "go" were going to have a lot of bodies. The case is clear that we are far too tolerant of bad code and bad engineers, and we don't have roles like "podiatry" or "nurse" to demote people down to where they can contribute and we can limit their harm.
- nradov 7y ago
  In healthcare, podiatry and nursing aren't demotions. They are entirely separate career tracks from medicine. Most nurses and podiatrists do those jobs because they want to, not because they failed at becoming physicians.