The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
joelonsoftware.com
The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#2Duck tape programmers also produce code only one or a few persons can patch. The result is technical debt that lead Netscape to do a full rewrite to produce Mozilla/Firefox.
The truth is in the middle with better tooling to make it easier to design good code and get it working faster with fewer bugs even while at the bleeding edge.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#3So a pragmatic generalist?
Duct Tape sounds more like what most are unfortunately stuck doing: inheriting this, depending on that, and plugging the whole mess into the cloud.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#4Still going back to Joel on Software for a good read. My favorite technical blog even though Joel has more or less stopped writing except for the occasional update.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#5Duck tape programmers also produce code only one or a few persons can patch. The result is technical debt that lead Netscape to do a full rewrite to produce Mozilla/Firefox. The truth is in the middle with better tooling to make it easier to design good code and get it working faster with fewer bugs even while at the bleeding edge.
yeah sounds a lot like the fabled "10x engineer" to me
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#6Duck tape programmers also produce code only one or a few persons can patch. The result is technical debt that lead Netscape to do a full rewrite to produce Mozilla/Firefox. The truth is in the middle with better tooling to make it easier to design good code and get it working faster with fewer bugs even while at the bleeding edge.
Not really.
You're assuming that ductape == bad. What your describing is someone writing bad code, not someone gaffertaping a bunch of modules together to make the _more important_ code work. (instead of re-writing a whole bunch of things to make stuff more "idiomatic" )
This is where innovation tokens come in. You have one innovation token per project, you can spend it on the thing you actually need, or some pointless part of the system that you're bored with maintaining.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#7This article and the one on innovation tokens are what I try to live by.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#8Being in a job like this makes me feel like I'm in a Dilbert cartoon.
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#9Duck tape programmers also produce code only one or a few persons can patch. The result is technical debt that lead Netscape to do a full rewrite to produce Mozilla/Firefox. The truth is in the middle with better tooling to make it easier to design good code and get it working faster with fewer bugs even while at the bleeding edge.
Netscape might be the worst example for your claim. Read why here:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
Re: The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
#10As cheesy as it might sound, I found inspiration in jwz's attitude way back in 1998-ish. Strong principles of pragmatic design, speaking your mind, and being able to walk when the bullshit gets too deep are still a winning combo.
Not to leave out Joel! He's an excellent curator of the software ecosystem, a kind of Steve Irwin of software.
It turns out that proper attitude, pragmatism, and getting results are the most durable skills in software: the rest is just tools and process.