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Phrases in computing that might need retiring

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Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#101

Post by eric-burel »

Jaruzel wrote: post #63
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

In Corporate and Enterprise environments, the term 'Technical Debt' is now commonly used for systems and platforms that are beyond their supportable lifecycle, but are still in use for reasons , yet need to be replaced as soon as possible. These systems were never just hacked together with the knowledge they'd be problem in the future.

Wouldn't "legacy" be a better word then? Meaning it wasn't meant to be a debt but it's still the legacy left to you today

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#103

Post by darkwater »

Jaruzel wrote: post #63
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

In Corporate and Enterprise environments, the term 'Technical Debt' is now commonly used for systems and platforms that are beyond their supportable lifecycle, but are still in use for reasons , yet need to be replaced as soon as possible. These systems were never just hacked together with the knowledge they'd be problem in the future.

Shouldn't those systems be named "legacy system" then?

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#104

Post by aaron695 »

abainbridge wrote: post #10

Sinister used to mean left handed. "A shambles" used to mean a slaughterhouse. Sanction used to mean allow, now it means not allow. It is fine for words to change meaning, even to their own opposite. Natural language has done that forever. Edit: you're all right, sanction has both meanings.

No post body was provided.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#105

Post by doctor_eval »

hyperman1 wrote: post #76
doctor_eval wrote: post #2

> "Agile: Nope, this one’s in the bin, I’m afraid. It used to mean “not waterfall” and now means “waterfall with a status meeting every day and an internal demo every two weeks”. We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy…" Yup. :-(

AFAIK, waterfall was always a straw man meant to knock down. Nobody sane ever did a pure waterfall model. The model came from http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970... and describes it as risky in that very paper. Notice diagram 2 (the waterfall), 3 (the dream) and 4(the reality). We had expensive agile consultants coming in a bit after 2000. They were telling us the current official process, RU…

Ha, this is a good rant and I like it.

Rational was all that and more in the 90s but ultimately AFAICT they were trying to make design into a coding exercise under a different name and with a fancy “language”; but that’s what code is for.

Unfortunately my reality has been that some shops and some managers actually do believe that the process is design -> build -> deploy and that any errors or delays in step 2 are the engineering teams fault.

I mean, they don’t say that bit out loud or anything.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#106

Post by falcor84 »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #61
falcor84 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding DevOps, a major aim was to embed operational concerns into all stages of development. In that sense, it was a massive success; a developer cannot anymore just say "here's a binary that I made on my machine, make it work in production", throw it towards ops and sign off.

> Regarding DevOps, a major aim was to embed operational concerns into all stages of development. In that sense, it was a massive success... I strongly disagree here. If it was such a success, then why are there devops jobs at all ? If it was meant to signify that developers should share responsibility on deployments and integrations, what's the role of a "devops engineer"? It seems to me that self-proclaimed devops…

>devops practitioners tend to draw lines to limit their responsibility in the software building process

I'd say you hit the nail on the head here. I would agree that DevOps does indeed stem from operations folks saying that they don't want full responsibility for how software runs in production, instead introducing tooling and processes to force more of these concerns onto devs.

As to terminology, "DevOps engineers" are ops engineers who adhere to this approach (or being a bit cynical, those who just have familiarity with relevant tooling and like the sound of that term).

And as to whether this is productive or not, I would argue that it's made the individual developer somewhat less productive on the metric of "writing code", but the overall organization more productive on the metric of "deploying working code that serves users".

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#107

Post by pmontra »

ghayes wrote: post #15
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

Right, and "debt" is a beautiful word here. It accurately describes receiving the value today, but then owing that time back, with interest, in the future.

Not sure about that. A large part of the company (everybody close to money) probably see debt as a good thing because it lets them buy stuff. Of course you have to pay debt to creditors and how do they do it? By making more debt. It works well until you have to pay it off, all of it. So if they ever enter in a discussion about technical debt expect them to suggest to make more debt (and move faster.)

Building without foundations, driving blindfolded, etc, could be better metaphors everybody can agree upon. If you're talking with a CFO, talk about high leverage (as for derivatives.)

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#108

Post by danielscrubs »

abainbridge wrote: post #10

Sinister used to mean left handed. "A shambles" used to mean a slaughterhouse. Sanction used to mean allow, now it means not allow. It is fine for words to change meaning, even to their own opposite. Natural language has done that forever. Edit: you're all right, sanction has both meanings.

What’s your thoughts about the term “literally”? It’s one of my bugbears, because the term lost its meaning and I don’t know of any good replacement…

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#109

Post by psi75 »

Agile [...] It used to mean “not waterfall” and now means “waterfall with a status meeting every day and an internal demo every two weeks”.

"Waterfall" is a straw man invented to sell Agile, which has evolved into a perverse, almost psychotic Taylorism... although I believe programmers themselves share a bit of fault in that. They assumed good faith on the part of the people managing them. That was not a wise move.

Technical Debt [...] Now means whatever anybody needs it to mean if they want their product owner to let them do some hobbyist programming on their line-of-business software, or else.

Uh, whose side is this guy on? Is he defending "product owners"? Is he saying we should forcibly typecast programmers to line-of-business grunts with no autonomy? If so, why should we take him seriously?

If programmers aren't getting personal investment in their career by the top executives, then they have every right to do "hobbyist programming" that will increase their employability, and they shouldn't have to justify themselves at all in doing so. The fact that we've failed to reach tribal agreement on this is an embarrassment.

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