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Many software companies are a joke

liou28335.medium.com

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#121

Post by LeanderK »

turminal wrote: post #72
onion2k wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone. I write a lot of documentation entirely with the awareness that no one else will read it. I write it for myself. I don't want to have to remember the intricacies of a system. I want to write things down, then move on immediately, and have the security of something I can refer back to if I need it when I revisit the s…

But doing so is your personal preference, you (i hope) are not required to do so. Some people find it easier to organize their work differently or not at all. Some people are astonishingly productive despite not writing anything down, ever.

What if the teams changes? Intricacies must be documented despite that probably nobody will ever read it. Somebody might depend on it.

Writing code is more about communicating how to solve a problem than just solving a problem, that's how I view it. If you don't communicate, nobody except you will ever understand it. It might be that you don't need to document a lot, maybe most is obvious if the key parts are sufficiently explained. But it's vital and sometimes it's better to write a bit more than a bit less. A thing is, outdated documentation might be worse than none, so it's a delicate balance.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#122

Post by drdrek »

Companies are a business and not academic or artistic institutes... while developer wellbeing can contribute its not a goal on its own.

If those 20 employees work on a bullshit project that could be done in a month, but at the end of the day generates tons of revenue its a good business endeavor. Could it be done more efficiently? Sure. Is it a better business venture than a work of art C++ code that was done super quickly but made no profit? Also yes.

He has some good points hidden in there but his developer centric view is so 90's I wonder if he was wearing a jeans jacket writing this.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#123

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

They are correct.

It doesn't matter, and nothing will change in large corporations. That's not a bad thing, or a good thing.

It's just the way things are.

I spent most of my career in large corporations; many of those years, as a manager, where it was my job to maintain all that overhead the author complains about. I'm quite aware of the need for it, and a good part of my job, was trying to streamline the overhead, and shield my coders from it, so they could get more coding done.

Nowadays, I work on my own (mostly), and the difference in productivity is amazing.

I remember when I first read The Agile Manifesto, I was, like, "These guys really get it!" It was a dawn of a new era. The scales fell from my eyes. There was hope! There was a light at the end of the tunnel!

The headlamp of the 5:15 Express, out of Sheboygan.

Seeing how "Agile" is being implemented in corporate (and also small corporate wannabe) shops kinda took the wind out of my sails.

But large corporations seem to get done what they need getting done. Very often, it's fairly "klunky" stuff.

But that gives small shops an "in." If they can speak to the customers of these corporations, they could make some sales.

Then...it comes time to scale.

Let the meetings begin...

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#124

Post by sirwhinesalot »

blowski wrote: post #75
remus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a strange article. They seem to miss the underlying point that in a business, generally speaking, writing the code is relatively easy. It's working out what problem you're trying to solve and who you're solving it for that is the hard part (an the bit that requires you to spend time talking to other people). Of course you write more code working on your side project, because you know exactly what you want…

The problem with the article is that it's the perspective of an engineer who hasn't had to think about higher-level problems. If I had to summarise their perspective it's "if engineers are writing code, that's a good thing, and anything else they do is probably a waste of time". But what if engineers are writing bad code? What if their code doesn't solve any customer problems? What if the other thing they're doing is…

We've figured out 20 years ago that writing code, showing the resulting program to customers and getting feedback was the most effective way to find out if you're actually solving customer problems. Some group of people wrote about it in something called the "Agile Manifesto" or some such.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#125

Post by Joel_Mckay »

amitport wrote: post #58
ethbr0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author is every software engineer I hate to work with. One who thinks that code is the only truly important part of a project. It's not. "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing, and only some of that is code. Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up. Do I and e…

I would even add that sometimes "maintainable and reliable" are overrated. Sometimes being quick to market is more important then having to maintain the product. Sometimes providing a bad product is only relative to the competition (which may have a worse product). Sometimes having a good customer service is more important than the reliability of the product. etc.,. I do agree with solving the end user needs... if a…

>"maintainable and reliable" are overrated

That is popular opinion among the unemployed, as hoisting that BS on your project lead has real world consequences after your code audit. =)

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#126

Post by ljm »

batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

I think if you read the author's other posts, they appear to just enjoy ranting. I wouldn't be surprised if they manifested after a beer or two considering how myopic and exaggerated they become.

Alongside this we also have: open source is inferior because of... reasons, something about older developers ageing like fine wine unless they work as web developers with all of those young whippersnappers learning new JS frameworks every month, something else about maths and algorithms but is really about Big O Notation being bullshit.

Not to dismiss the author's point: I'd like to believe they're being genuine and not just being controversial for clicks. But they have quite the chip on their shoulder it seems.

Also, it is quite amusing. I do enjoy the occasional rant.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#127

Post by ethbr0 »

2143 wrote: post #116
unlikelymordant wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negatives cancel, so I think you cancel the first 2 and get "this is to say that some companies are pathologically incapable of delivering software", which reads a bit nicer

Generally that works but sometimes it doesn't. For example, some people say statements like "I don't want no towels". What they really meant: "I don't want towels" What I get if I cancel the negatives: "I do want towels" The meaning flipped :)

Double-negatives in the "not+no" formulation tend to be a special case. The easiest rule (as you realized) would be "If there's a 'no' before the noun (direct object?), in an already negated phrase, then ignore the 'no'".

It's technically incorrect but common English.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#128

Post by matwood »

danielvaughn wrote: post #109
ethbr0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author is every software engineer I hate to work with. One who thinks that code is the only truly important part of a project. It's not. "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing, and only some of that is code. Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up. Do I and e…

A few days ago, I made a comment about good developers knowing how to think of their work from the business’s perspective. One guy responded by saying his only job is to write code and he doesn’t care about anything else. I just can’t imagine coming to that perspective, even if I understand the desire to have minimal responsibility.

> One guy responded by saying his only job is to write code and he doesn’t care about anything else.

Which is such a weird perspective to me. The point of writing software for business is to solve a business problem. Maybe it's a function of working in small companies and/or roles that straddle code writing and business, but I have a hard time writing good code unless I know the business problem space.

It's also why I think I don't get too worked up in the language arguments. I've written code from VB5 to Java to Go to JS all which deliver immense business value. When I think about the best code I've ever written, I don't think about how pretty it was or even the language, but is it still in use 5-10-20 years later.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#129

Post by Jensson »

ethbr0 wrote: post #38
batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

Author is every software engineer I hate to work with. One who thinks that code is the only truly important part of a project. It's not. "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing, and only some of that is code. Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up. Do I and e…

> Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up.

But if every project has non-developers deeply involved in them then the software is very shallow. So to me anyone who thinks that every developer needs to be involved in such meetings just shows they have never worked on anything deeper than a crud app with some basic business logic. If you work on anything like a compiler, a garbage collector, a database engine, a load balancer, any kind of software framework etc then you will have plenty of teams never needing to talk to non-developers.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#130

Post by ljm »

op00to wrote: post #40
shortformblog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy also wrote a hater’s take on open-source a few months back: https://liou28335.medium.com/why-i-dislike-open-source-acbc2... Something tells me he’s gunning for that Medium paycheck.

Oh man, that open source article is hilarious! Thank you for sharing.

I haven't contributed to open source in a few months and I still can't find a date to take to Starbucks. What am I doing wrong?
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