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Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

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Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#121

Post by paulcam »

stuhacking wrote: post #96
nostrademons wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that all status symbols in the programming world are meaningless, so in the absence of any useful metrics, we latch onto useless ones. Tests/LOC at least measures something , even if it is imperfect. It's probably better than measuring LOC themselves, which are often a long term cost for the company, not a benefit.

but, Tests/LLOC seems to state even less than LLOC. LLOC gives an indication of the complexity of the application (or a component). All Tests/LLOC seems to state is that some lines of code exist and potentially, some test cases are testing them.

This is why code coverage numbers are a much better metric.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#122

Post by duhmain »

dikbrouwer wrote: post #13

I'm a bit confused by this post. The author seems to celebrate a private office. I strongly prefer open work spaces that you share with others, as do many companies I've worked with/seen. Care to share your opinion? I'm curious...

Open office spaces are great! For socializing, that is. If you actually want to get work done, peace and quiet is a must.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#123

Post by singular »

jasonkester wrote: post #102
boyter wrote: post #9

Reading this almost makes me want to cry. It's still all to common these days to find developers with 4 year old machines, comprised of scavanged parts (from people leaving) running Windows XP. A level of bureaucracy forcing you to maintain 3 tickets (at least) in 3 different systems to make even a typo fix in a production system with 3 day minimum turn around time. Servers with less RAM and resources then your 4 yea…

Don't sweat it. We all worked there for a couple years. It's called "getting experience", and the key is to remember you're supposed to move on after you've built enough stuff to demonstrate your worth to the next place. This is what the beginning of everybody's development career looks like. Grit your teeth and get through it. It gets good later on.

Still there. Contributing to OSS (golang) + studying theory I missed because I didn't do compsci at uni. Once I hit the 40/50 patch count and have good algo/os knowledge I reckon I should be better placed to be attractive job-wise. Several failed 'views have seriously hit my confidence, but I am working on fixing obvious areas of deficiency.

A lot of the problem is that the stuff you build can't necessarily happen at the place you're at - if all your place do is db frontends and your coworkers produce endless spaghetti, anything you produce is going to be subsumed by that.

Another issue which is rarely spoken about is the atmosphere of the development environment - if people are on edge/insecure/[deadsea-ers][1] things can get nasty quick, and there is nothing better at pulling down your confidence.

I have come to the conclusion that you have to build your own positive output because you love it, and let the career-enhancing aspects act as a side-effect. I adore this stuff, that's why I'm doing it.

It is often frustrating though - I am 29, 30 in September and it is difficult not to feel trapped. The negative aspects of the job make it harder to do the positive stuff necessary to get out - got to work hard to keep your head above the water.

[1]:http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#124

Post by bkhl »

latch wrote: post #22

An assumption? We've been told pretty directly how complicated the process is (often with pride). See the 14 steps which turn a 5 minute code change into a multi-man-month-mammoth: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2003/10/28/53298... Or the now infamous Windows Shutdown "crapfest": http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c... There's more. And I have no problem with the author stating ho…

Those blogs were posted in 2003 and 2006. We are in year 2011. 5 years in tech industry is like 20 years in other industries. Just sayin'

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#125

Post by jasonlotito »

latch wrote: post #58
andywood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blog post is mainly about the tools developers use day-to-day while they're in coding mode. Tools and development processes do tend to be well thought out and efficient at MS. That's not really related to the organizational dynamics that come into play for planning products and features. That tends to be complicated, involving a lot of people, meetings, and debate. (I'm not defending it, just saying that's how i…

I don't mean to drag this out, since I largely agree with what you are saying, and it's true that the OP seems to focus on that. However, his intro blurb specifically says that we are wrong in assuming that writing software is a "soul-crushing bureaucratic exercise." Which, as you point out, the post never really says anything more about.

Remember, the intro blurb is discussion all the articles he intends to write on the subject. Together, they intend to show you how the intro is true. As it stands, he has two articles on the topic. Most people are only reading the one (the one which is linked). Even in that, the introduction is a common introduction for all the pieces (the two so far, so I imagine the others as well). That the original article focuses on coding doesn't mean he's ignoring other areas. Rather, that other areas simply haven't been written about.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#126

Post by aphexairlines »

nostrademons wrote: post #43
pacifi30 wrote: post #23

The thing here is not about if Microsoft let their developers use all the new shiny technology but the point to stress here is how much percentage everyday does a developer at MS actually codes, I bet it wont be more than 20%. I am so sure of this because being at Amazon since April last year, I havent coded more then 700 lines of code, bulk of which was supporting new features in the already behemoth software. I alw…

That bad at Amazon? I've been at Google for a little over 2 years and have written about 160,000 lines of code for them. (And deleted about 30,000.) Seems like a lot more than I expected, but just looking through my recent commit history, I wrote 830 lines of code just last week on my 20% project alone , so 1600 lines/week doesn't seem that unreasonable. And here I've been complaining about how I never have time to g…

My experience at Amazon so far (since last June) is definitely better than pacifi30's. I've been writing a lot of software (for both existing and new projects), the dev infrastructure is great, dev tool teams are very responsive and always improving our workflow, and the end result (mobile in my case) is fulfilling.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#127

Post by aphexairlines »

pacifi30 wrote: post #23

The thing here is not about if Microsoft let their developers use all the new shiny technology but the point to stress here is how much percentage everyday does a developer at MS actually codes, I bet it wont be more than 20%. I am so sure of this because being at Amazon since April last year, I havent coded more then 700 lines of code, bulk of which was supporting new features in the already behemoth software. I alw…

I joined just a little after you and my experience has been very positive. Feel free to talk to me (danielsi@) anytime you want to talk about the dev process in the company or our teams.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#128

Post by krig »

Nothing about his description really does it for me except the prospect of being able to play Skyrim on my work machine when it comes out.

I don't like open spaces, but being all alone in an office seems pretty horrible as well: Wouldn't you rather work from home, then? Ah, you say, but then people can't knock on your door to ask questions. Which, again, seems like it's making things worse, I don't want to sit in a closet waiting for people to knock on my door...

Around here we work on laptops, coding questions are handled via irc, most of the devs (not that many, edit: laptops with monitor/keyboard at workstations, that is. I don't want to imply that everyone is hunched over a laptop all the time.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#129

Post by listrophy »

adbge wrote: post #30
listrophy wrote: post #6

I turned down Microsoft when they recruited me in college. Wow, what a great decision. Now, I run a software firm where no one has an office, everyone pairs (including owners and interns), we have a /slightly/ better ratio than 1 test per 100 SLOC, etc.

> we have a /slightly/ better ratio than 1 test per 100 SLOC, etc. Has TDD really resulted in this becoming a status symbol? :P

Wow, I got blasted on this comment. So, there was a reason why I didn't start spouting our exact LOT/LOC ratio: I have no idea what it is. No one at our office does. That's not the important part. My point is that, on average, one test per 100 LOC is almost definitely not covering much of the logic. I mean... if you have one happy-path test and one expected failing test per block of code, you have one testing context per 200 lines. Two hundred lines!

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#130

Post by artmageddon »

singular wrote: post #123
jasonkester wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't sweat it. We all worked there for a couple years. It's called "getting experience", and the key is to remember you're supposed to move on after you've built enough stuff to demonstrate your worth to the next place. This is what the beginning of everybody's development career looks like. Grit your teeth and get through it. It gets good later on.

Still there. Contributing to OSS (golang) + studying theory I missed because I didn't do compsci at uni. Once I hit the 40/50 patch count and have good algo/os knowledge I reckon I should be better placed to be attractive job-wise. Several failed 'views have seriously hit my confidence, but I am working on fixing obvious areas of deficiency. A lot of the problem is that the stuff you build can't necessarily happen at…

I'm hitting 29 in a few months and am more or less in the same boat. Keep fighting the good fight.
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