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How to Design Software Good

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Re: How to Design Software Good

#121

Post by lmilcin »

koonsolo wrote: post #94
CathyWest wrote: post #80

> Writing good software can be hard, but it is worth the time and effort. Is it? I want this to be true because I want to write good software. But I've worked with some very senior developers who would disregard all software engineering and user experience concerns and just spew large quantities of low-quality code that made the managers just as happy, especially since it got done quickly. And the end-users in many n…

Very senior developers know things that are not intuitive, but very true. So I'll let you in on a few secrets. "Good enough is always good enough". You probably want to do more than good enough. Those developers you talked about, probably knew the amount of quality that was actually needed, no more, no less. Clean code doesn't mean "no bugs" and "good software": - I've seen very cool, popular, money making games that…

Very true, I agree on all points.

I would add the amount of effort put into designing and polishing any project that you can defend is correct is related to how much future development and use the project will see and how critical the project is for the company.

So, if you want to work o a nice quality project or want to spend a lot of your time on improvements to quality find yourself a project that will either see a lot of future development or a lot of future use or is extremely critical to the business or, best, all of these characteristics.

I see this mistake happen all the time -- people complaining on quality, disparaging previous developers or demanding effort to improve it just for quality sake ("because I just read this book and it can be done better") without reasonable arguments to support from business POV.

Also I see people categorizing all project deficiencies as technical debt where what they should be doing is to first establish what would be reasonable expectation regarding quality and then the debt is only what would be absolutely necessary to reach that reasonable expectation.

So for example, if you make a small app that will not reasonably see a lot of future development but is critical to work reliably in production (and it isn't) your debt would most likely be centered around making the application reliable enough and probably not around making the code nice (as long as it isn't preventing makeing the application reliable).

Re: How to Design Software Good

#122

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #89
CathyWest wrote: post #80

> Writing good software can be hard, but it is worth the time and effort. Is it? I want this to be true because I want to write good software. But I've worked with some very senior developers who would disregard all software engineering and user experience concerns and just spew large quantities of low-quality code that made the managers just as happy, especially since it got done quickly. And the end-users in many n…

The end users aren't happy, they mostly hate the crap that is foisted on them.

Very much this. People have incredibly low expectations of software, so of course the software industry feels no need to push for higher quality.

Generally business considerations >> user happiness.

Software is primarily shipped to make money. If a shitshow product - it's not hard to name a few - makes money, there is no business feedback loop which will raise quality.

Senior devs tend to justify this on the basis of experience, and management justifies it on the basis of shareholder value.

In reality it's just cheap, shoddy, dispiriting, and cynical. In a mature industry developers would be able to take pride in making end users happy [1], as opposed to making them frustrated and enraged.

[1] Not the same goal as impressing developer peers.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#123

Post by de_watcher »

xgbi wrote: post #90
CathyWest wrote: post #80

> Writing good software can be hard, but it is worth the time and effort. Is it? I want this to be true because I want to write good software. But I've worked with some very senior developers who would disregard all software engineering and user experience concerns and just spew large quantities of low-quality code that made the managers just as happy, especially since it got done quickly. And the end-users in many n…

Disclosure: small-ish company (~100 employees) in France You know, I kind of went through the same questioning: at my current company we have an employee that has his niche/historical role on one of the key infrastructure of our product. The guys works from his home and whatever hours, commits 300+ lines per commit (90% of which is unrelated to the commit name, just commenting things or uncommenting others). The code…

If you are valuable enough or underpaid then make everyone around suffer when they force you to work on these tasks. People will learn and you'll have easier time.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#125

Post by collyw »

bengale wrote: post #85
CathyWest wrote: post #80

> Writing good software can be hard, but it is worth the time and effort. Is it? I want this to be true because I want to write good software. But I've worked with some very senior developers who would disregard all software engineering and user experience concerns and just spew large quantities of low-quality code that made the managers just as happy, especially since it got done quickly. And the end-users in many n…

Pretty much my experience too. I don't think it's ever been worth the time or effort to spend time on writing quality software, the people that smash it out quickly are the ones rewarded. I'm starting to feel like the whole movement for 'software craftsmanship' is making a lot of developers miserable. It's maybe better for them to realise they are not artisans, they are bricklayers. To focus that creative energy on t…

>I'm starting to feel like the whole movement for 'software craftsmanship' is making a lot of developers miserable.

Not as miserable as working on some 7 year old system hacked together without any craftsmanship. Plus if its a long term project the maintenance costs must spiral.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#126

Post by fredrb »

skohan wrote: post #107
koonsolo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very senior developers know things that are not intuitive, but very true. So I'll let you in on a few secrets. "Good enough is always good enough". You probably want to do more than good enough. Those developers you talked about, probably knew the amount of quality that was actually needed, no more, no less. Clean code doesn't mean "no bugs" and "good software": - I've seen very cool, popular, money making games that…

> Clean code doesn't mean "no bugs" and "good software" This gets missed too often: clean interfaces are important, whether it's a UI or an API. Clean code? It depends. I once interviewed a dev who had all the right answers when it came to software development practices, TDD, etc, but when we looked at the product he was working on, the UX was a stuttering mess. I don't care what your code looks like if you did not a…

> don't care what your code looks like if you did not achieve a good end-product.

I do care if your code is a mess if other engineers have to maintain it.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#127

Post by collyw »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #98
CathyWest wrote: post #80

> Writing good software can be hard, but it is worth the time and effort. Is it? I want this to be true because I want to write good software. But I've worked with some very senior developers who would disregard all software engineering and user experience concerns and just spew large quantities of low-quality code that made the managers just as happy, especially since it got done quickly. And the end-users in many n…

I think I'm getting to that point as well. I've written some very tidy code back when (~5-10 years ago), but nowadays I'm more and more thinking it doesn't really matter - more than one of the projects I've spent months and years of my life on have already been replaced. Not because it wasn't good, just because an alternative was better for that company (like when they replaced some big java enterprise CMS with just…

Have you ever worked maintenance programming on some legacy software?

Re: How to Design Software Good

#128

Post by heidar »

Antoninus wrote: post #83
doubletgl wrote: post #82

Sorry to be a pedant, but the grammar and capitalization in this guide do not instill confidence. "How to Design Software Good" <- design well? "How will Your Users Do Their Work?" <- Seriously?

Maybe its meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

I thought it was a vague zoolander reference.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#129

Post by lou1306 »

skohan wrote: post #107
koonsolo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very senior developers know things that are not intuitive, but very true. So I'll let you in on a few secrets. "Good enough is always good enough". You probably want to do more than good enough. Those developers you talked about, probably knew the amount of quality that was actually needed, no more, no less. Clean code doesn't mean "no bugs" and "good software": - I've seen very cool, popular, money making games that…

> Clean code doesn't mean "no bugs" and "good software" This gets missed too often: clean interfaces are important, whether it's a UI or an API. Clean code? It depends. I once interviewed a dev who had all the right answers when it came to software development practices, TDD, etc, but when we looked at the product he was working on, the UX was a stuttering mess. I don't care what your code looks like if you did not a…

> the UX was a stuttering mess.

Is that a good metric to judge a developer, though? Good UX requires either formal training in the field, or a very gifted individual. In my opinion it has very little to do with the quality of either the code or the developer.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#130

Post by AznHisoka »

Antoninus wrote: post #83
doubletgl wrote: post #82

Sorry to be a pedant, but the grammar and capitalization in this guide do not instill confidence. "How to Design Software Good" <- design well? "How will Your Users Do Their Work?" <- Seriously?

Maybe its meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Thats how I interpreted it. Sort of like when people say happy christmas instead of merry.
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