7 ms·

I once quit a senior dev role as the tech architect at the company had veto power on all code and blocked my work because I'd spelled the word dialog the US way

by buro9 13y ago

I once quit a senior dev role as the tech architect at the company had veto power on all code and blocked my work because I'd spelled the word dialog the US way, rather than the UK way (dialogue). This was not in a public interface, this was in variable names. Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program. We were deadlocked for weeks, with him refusing to ship working code that fulfilled the business goals over this single issue. Quitting resolved the deadlock, and I learned afterwards that he really did go through the work and change it all to "dialogue".

Allan_Smithee 13y ago
"Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program." The parochialism of the wannabe "hacker" (entreprenerd) here used to be cute.
logicchains 13y ago
What did senior management think of this? I can't imagine them taking kindly to the architect delaying shipping for weeks over such a trivial thing.
- buro9 13y ago
  At the time he was viewed as critical to the project. They indulged him. A very steady stream of very good devs leaving the company occurred because of such invented rules and irrational behaviour. He was a truly great dev, but a fairly insane architect and gatekeeper.
  - logicchains 13y ago
    I wonder if they financial benefit they gained from keeping him around was greater than the financial loss due to continuously losing good devs...
Pacabel 13y ago
Why was it so critical to spell it "dialog", rather than "dialogue", as the higher-ups in the project apparently preferred?
- buro9 13y ago
  It wasn't, there was no business justification for it at all. He just invented a rule "all names and variables must be in UK English".
  - cunac 13y ago
    did you know about rule before start writing piece of code in question ? If yes, I really don't see how you can say in good faith that it wasn't your mistake to be fixed.
  - gphilip 13y ago
    GP asked the converse.
    - buro9 13y ago
      Good spot (I missed it). I spelled it in consistency with everything else in the source code at that time... US English. It was a British company, and I understood that the UI should be UK English, but did not comprehend/believe that variables should be too. Especially as one can't force CSS to stop calling it color.
      - deong 13y ago
        I still don't think that's actually the question that was being asked. It's not, "why do you think your spelling was preferred?" but rather "given that the complaint is how inflexible the senior tech was on the issue, why were you just as inflexible?" Particularly given that it's a UK company, the request may be arguably wrong, but it's at least semi-reasonable. Why make such a huge deal over it from either side?
        13y ago
005-18 13y ago
Sounds like two stubborn people. Unless you were taking a "stand" to make a point about a larger issue I don't see that you did anything better to fulfill the business goals.
asdkl234890 13y ago
It's a good thing for hackers/programmers/engineers to be stubborn.... up to a point, but the one thing an architect should not be is stubborn. And yet architects usually originate from promoted engineers. And that means they are stubborn, and the result is all kinds pointless conflicts with all the other developers.
- d4nt 13y ago
  The fact that the tech architect spent any time at all contemplating this issue is a massive red flag to me. Technical Architecture should be about making the right set of trade offs given the business goals of the system being developed. That involves spending a lot of time talking to people both inside and outside of dev team about what the goals are and how the decisions that devs are making are impacting everyone else in the company. That stuff is time consuming, but if there's any time left you should really be keeping up with the latest frameworks and tools. If you're spending your time reviewing commits and enforcing coding standards, you're doing it wrong.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
leephillips 13y ago
Since these were variable names they didn't have to be real words. So you should have explained that your "dialog" was not the American spelling of "dialogue", but a nonsense non-word that you made up (that happened to be spelled the same way as the American version of "dialogue").

by buro9 13y ago

Allan_Smithee 13y ago

"Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program." The parochialism of the wannabe "hacker" (entreprenerd) here used to be cute.

logicchains 13y ago

What did senior management think of this? I can't imagine them taking kindly to the architect delaying shipping for weeks over such a trivial thing.

buro9 13y ago
At the time he was viewed as critical to the project. They indulged him. A very steady stream of very good devs leaving the company occurred because of such invented rules and irrational behaviour. He was a truly great dev, but a fairly insane architect and gatekeeper.
- logicchains 13y ago
  I wonder if they financial benefit they gained from keeping him around was greater than the financial loss due to continuously losing good devs...

Pacabel 13y ago

Why was it so critical to spell it "dialog", rather than "dialogue", as the higher-ups in the project apparently preferred?

buro9 13y ago
It wasn't, there was no business justification for it at all. He just invented a rule "all names and variables must be in UK English".
- cunac 13y ago
  did you know about rule before start writing piece of code in question ? If yes, I really don't see how you can say in good faith that it wasn't your mistake to be fixed.
- gphilip 13y ago
  GP asked the converse.
  - buro9 13y ago
    Good spot (I missed it). I spelled it in consistency with everything else in the source code at that time... US English. It was a British company, and I understood that the UI should be UK English, but did not comprehend/believe that variables should be too. Especially as one can't force CSS to stop calling it color.
    - deong 13y ago
      I still don't think that's actually the question that was being asked. It's not, "why do you think your spelling was preferred?" but rather "given that the complaint is how inflexible the senior tech was on the issue, why were you just as inflexible?" Particularly given that it's a UK company, the request may be arguably wrong, but it's at least semi-reasonable. Why make such a huge deal over it from either side?
      - 13y ago

005-18 13y ago

Sounds like two stubborn people. Unless you were taking a "stand" to make a point about a larger issue I don't see that you did anything better to fulfill the business goals.

asdkl234890 13y ago

It's a good thing for hackers/programmers/engineers to be stubborn.... up to a point, but the one thing an architect should not be is stubborn. And yet architects usually originate from promoted engineers. And that means they are stubborn, and the result is all kinds pointless conflicts with all the other developers.

d4nt 13y ago
The fact that the tech architect spent any time at all contemplating this issue is a massive red flag to me. Technical Architecture should be about making the right set of trade offs given the business goals of the system being developed. That involves spending a lot of time talking to people both inside and outside of dev team about what the goals are and how the decisions that devs are making are impacting everyone else in the company. That stuff is time consuming, but if there's any time left you should really be keeping up with the latest frameworks and tools. If you're spending your time reviewing commits and enforcing coding standards, you're doing it wrong.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

leephillips 13y ago

Since these were variable names they didn't have to be real words. So you should have explained that your "dialog" was not the American spelling of "dialogue", but a nonsense non-word that you made up (that happened to be spelled the same way as the American version of "dialogue").