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The biggest reason is developer ego. Devs see their code as artwork an extension of themselves, so it's really hard to have critical conversations about small t
by exabrial 11mo ago
The biggest reason is developer ego. Devs see their code as artwork an extension of themselves, so it's really hard to have critical conversations about small things and they erupt into holy wars. Off hand:
* Formatting
* Style
* Conventions
* Patterns
* Using the latest frameworks or whats en-vogue
I think where I've seen results delivered effectively and consistently is where there is a universal style enforced, which removes the individualism from the codebase. Some devs will not thrive in that environment, but instead it makes the code a means-to-the-end, rather than being-the-end.
- ctoth 11mo agoThe UK Post Office lied and made people kill themselves ... because of dev ego?
- bzzzt 11mo agoTo me it screams more like an organization not wanting to assume blame and risk paying for their errors.
- AlotOfReading 11mo agoAs far as I can see in the modern tech industry landscape, virtually everyone has adopted style guides and automatic formatting/linting. Modern languages like Go even bake those decisions into the language itself. I'd consider managing that stuff essentially table-stakes in big orgs these days. It doesn't stop projects from failing in highly expensive and visible ways.
- bossyTeacher 11mo ago> in the modern tech industry landscape, virtually everyone has adopted style guides and automatic formatting/linting the modern tech industry landscape is in absolute terms is small compared to the wider tech industry landscape afaik
- exabrial 11mo agoIronically, the downvotes pretty much prove this is exactly correct.
- parasubvert 11mo agoEh, you're not wrong, but management failures tend to be a bigger issue. On the hierarchy of ways software projects fail, developer ego is kind of upper-middle of the pack rather than top. Delusional, ignorant, or sadistic leadership tends to be higher.