3 ms·

Magpie Driven Development is imho a symptom of Dead-end Driven Development (DDD). Dead-end Driven Development happens when the majority of a developer's time i

by mkl95 5y ago

Magpie Driven Development is imho a symptom of Dead-end Driven Development (DDD). Dead-end Driven Development happens when the majority of a developer's time is spent working with technologies that hurt their career. The way you end up like this is often because the projects you were initially hired for have reached a maintenance state. Instead of rewarding developers who have successfully completed the tasks they were initially hired for by assigning them tasks that benefit both their career and the company's goals, developers who meet management's expectations are often assigned to legacy projects that are riddled with obscure bugs, strange architecture, and bad choices. The end goal of these tasks is often to upgrade a system that uses ancient technologies in order to ease some customer's mind. In this situation burnout eventually creeps in and the engineer faces two choices: either they start doing something that puts their career back in the right track (MDD) despite the consequences, or they find another job that improves their situation. In the previous economy I would expect most people to pick option 1. In the current economy I'd expect an overwhelming majority to pick option 2.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
While I hear what you're saying, if everyone was like that, who would be left to maintain existing systems? In my limited experience, it takes up to 3 years to go from the start of a project to it being in a maintenance state. A lot of developers (consultants, self-employed, etc) have jumped ship before that, often around the two year mark. So there's two - three years of work, it's 90% done, it's nearly ready to go into production... then what? Who does the actual work? Who does the maintenance? I think anyone that picks a technology stack and architecture should stay long enough at a company working on it until they fully understand the consequences of their decisions. Too many people jump from one hype technology to the next, one greenfield start of a project to the other, but never have to deal with their own code and decisions ten years down the line. And you KNOW a lot of software has a lifetime of at least a decade, sometimes / often more. There's critical systems that are still running with the decisions of a previous generation of developers, people who are now being asked to come back from retirement to maintain their old systems. You can't call yourself a senior (or serious) developer if you've never had to deal with the consequences of your own actions.
- ageofwant 5y ago
  The consequences of their decisions and actions are significant raise in income, experience and exposure. Are you actually expecting people to stick around for "form's" sake ? Will the business invest in these people and keep them around during the hard times to see the benefit of good corporate governance ? Devs are not stupid.

by mkl95 5y ago

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

While I hear what you're saying, if everyone was like that, who would be left to maintain existing systems? In my limited experience, it takes up to 3 years to go from the start of a project to it being in a maintenance state. A lot of developers (consultants, self-employed, etc) have jumped ship before that, often around the two year mark. So there's two - three years of work, it's 90% done, it's nearly ready to go into production... then what? Who does the actual work? Who does the maintenance? I think anyone that picks a technology stack and architecture should stay long enough at a company working on it until they fully understand the consequences of their decisions. Too many people jump from one hype technology to the next, one greenfield start of a project to the other, but never have to deal with their own code and decisions ten years down the line. And you KNOW a lot of software has a lifetime of at least a decade, sometimes / often more. There's critical systems that are still running with the decisions of a previous generation of developers, people who are now being asked to come back from retirement to maintain their old systems. You can't call yourself a senior (or serious) developer if you've never had to deal with the consequences of your own actions.

ageofwant 5y ago
The consequences of their decisions and actions are significant raise in income, experience and exposure. Are you actually expecting people to stick around for "form's" sake ? Will the business invest in these people and keep them around during the hard times to see the benefit of good corporate governance ? Devs are not stupid.