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I had a colleague who had founded a successful company, it got acquired and in the process of extending his very elegant work to handle many more cases it ... g
by not2b 4y ago
I had a colleague who had founded a successful company, it got acquired and in the process of extending his very elegant work to handle many more cases it ... got worse. Adding features under time pressure to satisfy customers made it much less clean. After fighting it for a while, he eventually sounded more resigned about it, saying "that's what code that makes money looks like". Not sure if it has to be that way.
- tomlockwood 4y ago> Not sure if it has to be that way. Neither, but I'm yet to work at a company that both had code and had zero tech debt. I think there's something about capitalism that makes people want to deliver value as soon as possible, and value isn't necessarily dependent on good tests, particularly at the start of a project.
- ulizzle 4y agoYou will always have tech debt, it's a matter of degree. Of course, you have to feel what the best ratio is for your project, which is highly dependent on circumstances, but you definitely want as little tech debt as possible. But what does capitalism have to do with anything?
- tomlockwood 4y agoCapitalism drives people to deliver "value" as quickly as possible. That's the profit motive, which is the whole point.
- ulizzle 4y agoThe profit motive is about wanting to make money from a project, not about how it's actually achieved. If delivering value must be done slowly to make a profit, so be it. Notice how alcohol is generally more expensive with age (vintage).
- tomlockwood 4y agoThere's many ongoing projects to make whisky faster using ultrasonic agitation! Why? Because if the same value can be delivered faster, people try to. The same is true of software, and testing gets pruned.