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I have built applications that have been around for 10 to 15 years. The only thing that would have been good is to know in advance which ones will last that lo

I have built applications that have been around for 10 to 15 years. The only thing that would have been good is to know in advance which ones will last that long - one was a temporary proof of concept!

virtue3 6y ago
The jerks always say that it will be 'temporary' and we can redo it later. HAH
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  This is why at my last job we had a rule that said prototypes could not be shipped as production software. It had to be either completely rewritten, or at least completely code reviewed and the "bad" parts rewritten.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    I approach this by writing exploratory prototypes with good modular boundaries, but stub/hacky implementations. Keeping it simple lets me throw modules away as I refactor, until everything's been rewritten and then I ship it.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
      Sure, and that works great for a personal approach to code. But when your lifecycle from requirements through release needs to be validated, something more scalable is required. Sometimes that scalable thing is "anyone shipping prototype code will be fired."
- bserge 6y ago
  It seems like no matter the industry, a (good) temporary fix becomes a permanent solution.
- lozaning 6y ago
  We never have the money to do it right the first time, instead we always find the money to do it a second time.
bArray 6y ago
Some code I wrote in a drunken haze has been running continuously for 7 years with zero downtime - it was only meant to be temporary! It has zero comments, the code was inefficient, the variable names are things like "theThing" (it's the best I could do at the time) and "database" is just a series of text files carefully read/written to on the disk.
smoe 6y ago
In my first job we did project/information management systems. Initially for civil engineering projects, later more generally for governments and enterprises. In some cases we had to have contingency plans for the software and data in case the company goes out of business within the coming 15 years. Next I worked in advertisement, where clients spent similar sums as the above for cross media campaigns lasting maybe 14 days That was quite the interesting contrast work wise :)

virtue3 6y ago

The jerks always say that it will be 'temporary' and we can redo it later. HAH

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
This is why at my last job we had a rule that said prototypes could not be shipped as production software. It had to be either completely rewritten, or at least completely code reviewed and the "bad" parts rewritten.
- sterlind 6y ago
  I approach this by writing exploratory prototypes with good modular boundaries, but stub/hacky implementations. Keeping it simple lets me throw modules away as I refactor, until everything's been rewritten and then I ship it.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
    Sure, and that works great for a personal approach to code. But when your lifecycle from requirements through release needs to be validated, something more scalable is required. Sometimes that scalable thing is "anyone shipping prototype code will be fired."
bserge 6y ago
It seems like no matter the industry, a (good) temporary fix becomes a permanent solution.
lozaning 6y ago
We never have the money to do it right the first time, instead we always find the money to do it a second time.

bArray 6y ago

Some code I wrote in a drunken haze has been running continuously for 7 years with zero downtime - it was only meant to be temporary! It has zero comments, the code was inefficient, the variable names are things like "theThing" (it's the best I could do at the time) and "database" is just a series of text files carefully read/written to on the disk.

smoe 6y ago

In my first job we did project/information management systems. Initially for civil engineering projects, later more generally for governments and enterprises. In some cases we had to have contingency plans for the software and data in case the company goes out of business within the coming 15 years. Next I worked in advertisement, where clients spent similar sums as the above for cross media campaigns lasting maybe 14 days That was quite the interesting contrast work wise :)