6 ms·

Reading this almost makes me want to cry. It's still all to common these days to find developers with 4 year old machines, comprised of scavanged parts (from p

by boyter 16y ago

Reading this almost makes me want to cry. It's still all to common these days to find developers with 4 year old machines, comprised of scavanged parts (from people leaving) running Windows XP. A level of bureaucracy forcing you to maintain 3 tickets (at least) in 3 different systems to make even a typo fix in a production system with 3 day minimum turn around time. Servers with less RAM and resources then your 4 year old desktop. Laptops? Too expensive so just use this 8 year old IBM one when we need after hours support. Source control? Use TFS which is the most god awful ticket manager/source control system the world has ever seen. Private office? No, shared space, with people having loud meetings behind the developers at all hours of the work day. Corperate firewall blocking things like stackoverflow. A view from the office? No, other people can have that, you look at a concrete wall. I guess the moral of this is work for a company that values developers. Keep that in mind while looking for a job if you are one.

mfukar 16y ago
What about new machines running Windows XP? That's just sad.
- boyter 16y ago
  Most of my direct managers and indeed everyone else not in IT seems to have a new machine. The majority are running XP.
thaumaturgy 16y ago
And for me, it hilighted some of what I've suspected for a while is wrong with Windows development. I own a small company that handles a lot of end-users' various issues. Although I spend most of my time now coding, I spent more than my fair share of time working one-on-one with individuals and companies that were having problems with their systems. I still spend around 10 hours a week doing it. My primary development machine is an aging laptop that can't even play YouTube videos any more without stuttering. I hate almost every minute of using it. It's slow, and limited, and it hangs. So when I write something, I write it to work well on that laptop, because I know there are lots -- lots -- of people out there with similar old hardware, and to say they're frustrated with computers is an understatement. How could a Windows developer possibly understand just how frustrating their product is when they spend all of their time using the most powerful hardware available? How could they possibly understand that Windows file sharing in a mixed environment running SBS 2008 is still complete and miserable and utter garbage, when they're running on a network that hides those kinds of issues? Their development process is great for their developers. No argument there, and I'm totally and unabashedly envious. It's also terrible and completely wrong for most of their many users.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  I don't think that's actually the problem. Windows (and many other MS groups) have quite excellent performance and integration testing. They generally do a good job of keeping performance under control. I think the biggest problem is how they approach performance as a test signoff criteria, usually, rather than as a budgeted line-item with goals for improvement. As to situations like what you describe with file sharing in a certain environment that mostly comes down to insufficient beta testing and straight up prioritization/de-prioritization of certain issues.
  - seldo 16y ago
    Treating performance as a minimum bar that has to be met rather than a goal in and of itself sounds exactly like the kind of development process that would produce Windows -- which always feels sluggish if you're using anything other than the latest hardware. I don't think Microsoft realizes how enormously performance contributes to user dissatisfaction with their OS. As a web developer, I know that adding just a second to a page load massively diminishes perceived usefulness of a system; Google spends enormous amounts shaving tens of milliseconds off their page displays. At the level of an operating system, that kind of user sensitivity to performance must be at least the same if not magnified. It seems like performance, especially on older hardware, should be far more of a priority for Microsoft than it apparently is.
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      To be fair, Windows 7 made some great strides, and ended up being faster than Vista on a lot of older hardware. However, that does tend to be the exception. The general perception of performance (at least in the areas of MS that I had contact with when I was working there) is that it's important to hold the line in performance, and it's not generally valuable to invest in actually improving performance over time. MS spends a lot of resources measuring performance very accurately, but not nearly enough resources in making appropriate architecture and design choices, or in making big performance improvement pushes. My experience and observation is that performance improvements of substantial magnitude are often available for the taking in almost all software projects, but it requires a concerted effort to realize those improvements. MS instead spends its efforts on merely making sure that the software doesn't get slower by too much.
megablast 16y ago
You choose were you want to work. Lots of places do this, my last few places in small firms bought me brand new computers when I started, and let 2 let me choose exactly what I wanted. It depends how important the company sees IT/how good a manager you have.
- boyter 16y ago
  My manager is pretty good. The issue seems to be we are treated like a proper "development" shop, but not provided some of the basic tools due to strange funding decisions. Its not all bad, but there is enough smell there to take away a lot of the joy I usually get from code.
jasonkester 16y ago
Don't sweat it. We all worked there for a couple years. It's called "getting experience", and the key is to remember you're supposed to move on after you've built enough stuff to demonstrate your worth to the next place. This is what the beginning of everybody's development career looks like. Grit your teeth and get through it. It gets good later on.
- boyter 16y ago
  I guess thats where I am now. Three years and it might be time to look towards something else. Cheers for making me feel better about it though.
  - alecco 16y ago
    Avoid the Watercooler Gang http://web.archive.org/web/20080502192810/http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html http://web.archive.org/web/20080502192810/http://www.gapingv... Move on ASAP.
- singular 16y ago
  Still there. Contributing to OSS (golang) + studying theory I missed because I didn't do compsci at uni. Once I hit the 40/50 patch count and have good algo/os knowledge I reckon I should be better placed to be attractive job-wise. Several failed 'views have seriously hit my confidence, but I am working on fixing obvious areas of deficiency. A lot of the problem is that the stuff you build can't necessarily happen at the place you're at - if all your place do is db frontends and your coworkers produce endless spaghetti, anything you produce is going to be subsumed by that. Another issue which is rarely spoken about is the atmosphere of the development environment - if people are on edge/insecure/[deadsea-ers][1] things can get nasty quick, and there is nothing better at pulling down your confidence. I have come to the conclusion that you have to build your own positive output because you love it, and let the career-enhancing aspects act as a side-effect. I adore this stuff, that's why I'm doing it. It is often frustrating though - I am 29, 30 in September and it is difficult not to feel trapped. The negative aspects of the job make it harder to do the positive stuff necessary to get out - got to work hard to keep your head above the water. [1]:http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...

by boyter 16y ago

mfukar 16y ago

What about new machines running Windows XP? That's just sad.

boyter 16y ago
Most of my direct managers and indeed everyone else not in IT seems to have a new machine. The majority are running XP.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

And for me, it hilighted some of what I've suspected for a while is wrong with Windows development. I own a small company that handles a lot of end-users' various issues. Although I spend most of my time now coding, I spent more than my fair share of time working one-on-one with individuals and companies that were having problems with their systems. I still spend around 10 hours a week doing it. My primary development machine is an aging laptop that can't even play YouTube videos any more without stuttering. I hate almost every minute of using it. It's slow, and limited, and it hangs. So when I write something, I write it to work well on that laptop, because I know there are lots -- lots -- of people out there with similar old hardware, and to say they're frustrated with computers is an understatement. How could a Windows developer possibly understand just how frustrating their product is when they spend all of their time using the most powerful hardware available? How could they possibly understand that Windows file sharing in a mixed environment running SBS 2008 is still complete and miserable and utter garbage, when they're running on a network that hides those kinds of issues? Their development process is great for their developers. No argument there, and I'm totally and unabashedly envious. It's also terrible and completely wrong for most of their many users.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
I don't think that's actually the problem. Windows (and many other MS groups) have quite excellent performance and integration testing. They generally do a good job of keeping performance under control. I think the biggest problem is how they approach performance as a test signoff criteria, usually, rather than as a budgeted line-item with goals for improvement. As to situations like what you describe with file sharing in a certain environment that mostly comes down to insufficient beta testing and straight up prioritization/de-prioritization of certain issues.
- seldo 16y ago
  Treating performance as a minimum bar that has to be met rather than a goal in and of itself sounds exactly like the kind of development process that would produce Windows -- which always feels sluggish if you're using anything other than the latest hardware. I don't think Microsoft realizes how enormously performance contributes to user dissatisfaction with their OS. As a web developer, I know that adding just a second to a page load massively diminishes perceived usefulness of a system; Google spends enormous amounts shaving tens of milliseconds off their page displays. At the level of an operating system, that kind of user sensitivity to performance must be at least the same if not magnified. It seems like performance, especially on older hardware, should be far more of a priority for Microsoft than it apparently is.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    To be fair, Windows 7 made some great strides, and ended up being faster than Vista on a lot of older hardware. However, that does tend to be the exception. The general perception of performance (at least in the areas of MS that I had contact with when I was working there) is that it's important to hold the line in performance, and it's not generally valuable to invest in actually improving performance over time. MS spends a lot of resources measuring performance very accurately, but not nearly enough resources in making appropriate architecture and design choices, or in making big performance improvement pushes. My experience and observation is that performance improvements of substantial magnitude are often available for the taking in almost all software projects, but it requires a concerted effort to realize those improvements. MS instead spends its efforts on merely making sure that the software doesn't get slower by too much.

megablast 16y ago

You choose were you want to work. Lots of places do this, my last few places in small firms bought me brand new computers when I started, and let 2 let me choose exactly what I wanted. It depends how important the company sees IT/how good a manager you have.

boyter 16y ago
My manager is pretty good. The issue seems to be we are treated like a proper "development" shop, but not provided some of the basic tools due to strange funding decisions. Its not all bad, but there is enough smell there to take away a lot of the joy I usually get from code.

jasonkester 16y ago

Don't sweat it. We all worked there for a couple years. It's called "getting experience", and the key is to remember you're supposed to move on after you've built enough stuff to demonstrate your worth to the next place. This is what the beginning of everybody's development career looks like. Grit your teeth and get through it. It gets good later on.

boyter 16y ago
I guess thats where I am now. Three years and it might be time to look towards something else. Cheers for making me feel better about it though.
- alecco 16y ago
  Avoid the Watercooler Gang http://web.archive.org/web/20080502192810/http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html http://web.archive.org/web/20080502192810/http://www.gapingv... Move on ASAP.
singular 16y ago
Still there. Contributing to OSS (golang) + studying theory I missed because I didn't do compsci at uni. Once I hit the 40/50 patch count and have good algo/os knowledge I reckon I should be better placed to be attractive job-wise. Several failed 'views have seriously hit my confidence, but I am working on fixing obvious areas of deficiency. A lot of the problem is that the stuff you build can't necessarily happen at the place you're at - if all your place do is db frontends and your coworkers produce endless spaghetti, anything you produce is going to be subsumed by that. Another issue which is rarely spoken about is the atmosphere of the development environment - if people are on edge/insecure/[deadsea-ers][1] things can get nasty quick, and there is nothing better at pulling down your confidence. I have come to the conclusion that you have to build your own positive output because you love it, and let the career-enhancing aspects act as a side-effect. I adore this stuff, that's why I'm doing it. It is often frustrating though - I am 29, 30 in September and it is difficult not to feel trapped. The negative aspects of the job make it harder to do the positive stuff necessary to get out - got to work hard to keep your head above the water. [1]:http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...