Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Project from Hell (2008)

projectfailures.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 157 posts

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#81

Post by nineteen999 »

std_throwaway wrote: post #75
nineteen999 wrote: post #71

> No dynamic library linking: executable sizes in the range of several hundred megabytes I thought that with Golang and the popularity of static linking for apps in Docker containers that this was now considered acceptable again (tongue firmly in cheek).

I don't actually see this as a problem; as long as you're only running one application like that.

If somebody is going to run statically linked binaries, they would understand the security implications of that, and that they need to be able to rebuild and redeploy their binary if a security hole is discovered in a third-party library that was linked into their program.

They would already have CI/CD processes in place to rebuild the binary/container, run regression tests and redeploy the application/container to production, surely?

So what difference does it make if it's one or one hundred applications/binaries/containers then?

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#82

Post by baud147258 »

kakwa_ wrote: post #72
baud147258 wrote: post #18

Another comment regarding this: "In a country like France, corruption is not uncommon at that level, goes mostly undiscovered and is rarely prosecuted. " My brother is working in a construction bussiness in France and he has a handfull of stories of this type of high-level corruption (house built for the ex-mayor, refection work done for a lawyer, invitations to Roland-Garros...). But as the author have said, it's th…

Not to mention that we have the former president Nicolas Sarkozy on trial for corruption right now. He just took a few millions from Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2008 campaign. And there were a slew of big international military contracts in the 80ies/90ies which were subverted to finance political campaigns (Taiwanese frigates, Agosta contract with Pakistan). These scandals tend to be judged long after the facts (…

I've said high-level to contrast to street-level when you slip a bank note to avoid a fine or go first in the queue, but his stories do not implicate that level of corruption, at most local politicians.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#83

Post by duncan_bayne »

tigershark wrote: post #66
desertrider12 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ is only "fast" because people who care about performance use it and a lot of people who are good at compilers work on gcc/intel/llvm. If the LLVM team decided to spend 5 years making python "fast", I bet they could make it benchmark just as well as C++.

No, It’s not possible to optimise Python like c++ because of the characteristics of the language. Plenty of very good people are working on Python optimisation and it’s still painfully slow and will always be.

Perhaps you should consider this a different way.

Consider the end to end performance of a system - from inputs in (say, timesheets and HR data) to outputs out (bank payment APIs called, emails sent).

Would you bet the end to end performance of a system built by mediocre C++ programmers would be better than that of a system built by mediocre Python programmers?

I certainly wouldn't.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#84

Post by baud147258 »

wazoox wrote: post #45
rhapsodic wrote: post #5

>Average turn-over for the newcomers: 3 months, the legal time to leave your job in France. Can someone explain the meaning of this? I think something got lost in translation.

When you're a "cadre" (most engineers are), you can leave or be fired on the spot for 3 months (now 4), renewable once (so then at most 6 months, now 8 months) without any notice, no need for a good reason, it's just over, bye bye, here's your cardboard box and get out, US style. So in this case, what could happen? either you're a competent engineer, got just hired and sent to this circle of hell, you'd probably leav…

This period is only after the start of the job. (it did not seem clear from your comment)

Also I did not know the maximum duration of trial period has changed, thank for the info.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#86

Post by Tehdasi »

ryandrake wrote: post #29
jmull wrote: post #25

I would guess the project was (is?) running pretty much just as the people in charge wanted it to run. 10 years in and they were still billing -- more than ever -- for a project that would have completed 7-8 years previously if things had been done according to plan. All the seemingly massively stupid and counter productive decisions made make sense if the goal is to confuse matters to make it seem like progress has…

What did the demotivational poster say? Consultants don’t make money with solutions, they make money by prolonging the problem.

"If you're not part of the solution, there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem"

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#87

Post by kakwa_ »

fnordsensei wrote: post #51
ryandrake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did the demotivational poster say? Consultants don’t make money with solutions, they make money by prolonging the problem.

That's the fallacy with hourly billing. The alternative model is value-based pricing, where you price the solution/intervention upfront. Of course, this becomes more expensive upfront as well, because the consultant takes on the risk. Hourly billing seems cheaper to the client, since they have to take on the risk instead.

Public contracts (like the one mentioned in the blog post) are "valued-based" ("contrat au forfait" in french).

But you can circumvent these by over-billing contract additions/change in requirements ("avenants" in french). In theory those are limited to 20% of the original amount, but with contract renewals and if the government agency already sunk large sum of money into the project it's possible to bypass this limit.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#88

Post by MisterTea »

> Coffee machines are regularly out of order for several days. Somebody who drinks coffee is less productive than somebody sitting at his desk, typing away precious lines of code.

> The same coffee machines are switched off whenever officials come to visit the site, to give the impression that everybody is at work.

Inconceivable! I'm convinced this person worked for aliens in human skin suits. Think Edgar from Men in Black. Obviously missed the memo from high command where it is mentioned that humans perform better when caffeinated so supply them with plenty of free coffee and tea to keep them productive and ready to harvest, er, review.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#89

Post by nwatson »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #34
ryandrake wrote: post #28

I love how the first thing complained about was the use of C++ for the project. Compared to the lack of sane source control and release management, inexperience of the team, dozens of layers of abstraction, management bureaucracy, toxic culture, basic facilities like toilets being inoperative... I think using C++ was literally the least of their concerns.

They also started, if I'm doing my arithmetic right, in 1996. Honestly, I could see C++ having been their best choice back then. Every language I would rather do a large project in is either newer than that or would have been pretty immature for a large project in the mid-90s.

I sat through too many 3 hour cfront compiles.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#90

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #63
sjm-lbm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also started, if I'm doing my arithmetic right, in 1996. Honestly, I could see C++ having been their best choice back then. Every language I would rather do a large project in is either newer than that or would have been pretty immature for a large project in the mid-90s.

C++ was pretty immature for a large project in 1996. It was first standardized in 1998.

It was already in wide use long before then. Microsoft's MFC was first released in 1992, and that was the Windows desktop library for years.

Java was still new and slow. There were some interesting RAD tools, but those weren't particularly well suited to 'large' projects.

Post reply on HN