Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

Post by whstl » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

chubot wrote: post #118

sirsinsalot wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. I am. I'm paid more than most developers to run a team doing just this. We make minimal change, have an absolutely non-negotiable focus on stability and minimalism and reject any change that isn't absolutely driven by validated majority user need. Even then, the bar is high. I'm not saying this is a common situation, but it certainly isn't…

What kind of software do you work on? At what company? I have seen low level parts that are managed well, because employees have skin in the game But I’ve also seen a lot of what this post is talking about

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

lewisjoe wrote: post #73

If anything it's the incentive system in software industry, which is at fault. 1. No designer is given promotion for sticking to conventional designs. It's their creative & clever designs that get them attention and career incentives. 2. No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. It's re-writes and the effort he puts in to churn out more solutions (than there are problems) that offer…

Post by Hackbraten » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

sh34r wrote: post #183

lewisjoe wrote: post #73

If anything it's the incentive system in software industry, which is at fault. 1. No designer is given promotion for sticking to conventional designs. It's their creative & clever designs that get them attention and career incentives. 2. No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. It's re-writes and the effort he puts in to churn out more solutions (than there are problems) that offer…

I agree with just about everything you've said, except that bit about rewrites. Rewrite projects typically go down in flames, and on the rare occasions that they don't, the business stakeholders are still mad because their precious feature factory was down for maintenance for months.

Post by klysm » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

McGlockenshire wrote: post #24

klysm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Saying simple > complex doesn’t actually mean anything because it’s effectively impossible to pin down definitions. They are totally in the eye of the beholder. Solutions that are simple in one axis almost always trade of complexity in other axes.

That's why I prefer the form "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work." There's always going to be a minimum level of complexity. Sometimes that minimal level calls for throwing a PHP script up on some shared hosting provider somewhere. Sometimes that minimal level calls for an Enterprise-level design with ten layers of abstraction because you need to be able to individually unit test every aspect. Being aware…

Post by smfjaw » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #83

stevehind wrote: post #20

This resonates and one way to describe it is an incentive problem. Someone whose incentives are tightly aligned with the business is going to solve the actual problem and simply and effectively as possible. Someone who is incentivized to build career capital and experience other than via impact (e.g. so they can get uplevelled, pass an external interview loop, etc) is much more likely to focus on unimportant hard pro…

> Someone whose incentives are tightly aligned with the business is going to solve the actual problem and simply and effectively as possible. Equity is the entirely the answer for cutting through all the bullshit. At least in my head. I don't know how it plays in other people's minds but mine sounds like: "If we ship and go live, I get x% of all profit moving forward in my personal scrooge mcduck money bin". Pretty b…