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What factors explain the nature of software?

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Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#81

Post by kmoser »

rqtwteye wrote: post #30
bluefirebrand wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming I firmly reject this. If you can't build quality then you don't deserve to be in business I'm so sick of the fact that everyone is ok accepting "just barely passable" It has lead to everything new being built is crap. New housing is crap, new furniture is crap, new…

I have learned over the years that there are different types of devs. Some are ok with cranking out features without regard for overall architecture and can handle the chaos of constant quick fixes over previous quick fixes. There are others (like me) who like well designed systems and get stressed when they are asked to just crank out features without regard for the overall system. Personally I believe that my appro…

Every situation is different, and sometimes it's prudent to write a kludge to fix something now, while other times it's more prudent to take your time developing a long term solution. There's even the middle ground of monkey patch now, long term solution later.

I would argue that a well rounded developer will have the capacity to write kludges when necessary, and long term solutions when necessary. Now, if your boss repeatedly asks you to write the code one way and you are always disagreeing with them, then that would be a good reason to find another job. But if you trust your boss, you'll write the code however they ask, even if it's not your natural preference.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#82

Post by browningstreet »

ak_111 wrote: post #62
browningstreet wrote: post #2

I was once the CTO of a financial services firm that had been founded by a non-technical person. When I was hired the code base was in poor shape. With a bit of guidance we overhauled the codebase in 3 months and swept clean about 15 years of technical debt. They were using a 13 year old version of the compiler. New clients were requiring audits and attestations we wouldn’t have been able to pass. I was able to hire…

I have a meta question here, am always curious when seemingly competent engineer such as yourself put up with this kind of management. It is unbearable to work for someone who doesn't appreciate your work let alone belittles truly hard-earned achievements, for example that statement when he demanded you get 4000% rather than 2000% that you achieved would have made me quit on the spot. Further from the sounds of it th…

Keeping it slightly abstract because enough people can figure out company/time/place from what I wrote…

I had something to accomplish before I left. I made a mark in the niche we were operating in. Beyond that I’m reluctant to be more specific.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#83

Post by halfcat »

On the author’s circular specification problem, there’s an aspect of this that happens in physical disciplines also.

We build houses and conduct surgeries, and planning helps the doing, but doing also helps the planning. One difference is those things are not freely replicable and there are physical costs to building copies or building exponentially improved versions of physical things. So we tend to build roughly the same thing over and over. That iterative feedback loop has been running for decades or centuries, informing the process to the point we can now estimate pretty accurately what it will cost to build a house and estimate how long it will take.

But software is freely copyable. One person can build something and share it with everyone. If it’s widely useful, it gets made into an app, library, framework, or language. We are never spending decades in the plan/build loop honing the process of building the same app over and over. We are, in a sense, perpetually on the forefront building something that hasn’t been built in exactly this way before, and the only way to build the new thing is to plan a little, and build a little, and iterate on it. And it often goes about as well as the first time someone tried to do surgery.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#84

Post by rendaw »

ak_111 wrote: post #62
browningstreet wrote: post #2

I was once the CTO of a financial services firm that had been founded by a non-technical person. When I was hired the code base was in poor shape. With a bit of guidance we overhauled the codebase in 3 months and swept clean about 15 years of technical debt. They were using a 13 year old version of the compiler. New clients were requiring audits and attestations we wouldn’t have been able to pass. I was able to hire…

I have a meta question here, am always curious when seemingly competent engineer such as yourself put up with this kind of management. It is unbearable to work for someone who doesn't appreciate your work let alone belittles truly hard-earned achievements, for example that statement when he demanded you get 4000% rather than 2000% that you achieved would have made me quit on the spot. Further from the sounds of it th…

I guess as CTO you're already at the top, but if the owner thinks you're doing bad work and you have to fight for resources despite meeting reasonable goals, what's the actual payoff working there? You'd be paddling upstream forever, I can't imagine the owner would agree to bonuses or promotions, and I'd reasonably expect the owner would be looking for a replacement CTO at the end of that.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#85

Post by daelon »

spit2wind wrote: post #9
browningstreet wrote: post #2

I was once the CTO of a financial services firm that had been founded by a non-technical person. When I was hired the code base was in poor shape. With a bit of guidance we overhauled the codebase in 3 months and swept clean about 15 years of technical debt. They were using a 13 year old version of the compiler. New clients were requiring audits and attestations we wouldn’t have been able to pass. I was able to hire…

CatB is a fine book. That feels like such add choice for the situation, aside from just seeing if the person was willing to engage with ideas within software. I'm curious what texts people would suggest for a non-developer to get some insight. The ones that come to my mind are the Mythical Man Month, Peopleware, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Glass, or maybe even the 1968 NATO report on software engin…

> CatB is a fine book.

Holy shit, THAT'S why Eric Raymonds website is catb.org. How did I never realize it was the abbreviation of the book title?

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#86

Post by Kache »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
ak_111 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a meta question here, am always curious when seemingly competent engineer such as yourself put up with this kind of management. It is unbearable to work for someone who doesn't appreciate your work let alone belittles truly hard-earned achievements, for example that statement when he demanded you get 4000% rather than 2000% that you achieved would have made me quit on the spot. Further from the sounds of it th…

Not OP, but I worked for a similar founder. The only work he wanted software engineers to do was writing code, and not just that... only 1. code that added a customer visible feature or 2. code that fixed a major, customer-facing bug that a customer actually complained about . Fixes for bugs not discovered by customers? No. Performance improvements? No, not even visible ones. Refactorings? No. Technical debt cleanup?…

I don't understand these kinds of leadership/management. What they want clearly isn't a tech company. They don't want technical wisdom, insight, nor vision. Why bother hiring in-house SWE's at all?

They should just stick with consultants and contactors.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#87

Post by [deleted] »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #40

These are to some extent manifestations of another factor. In software engineering, we skip entirely an essential step in the engineering process which is central to mature engineering domains involving complex dynamic systems e.g. chemical engineering. If we skipped that step in those other engineering domains, we would see design disasters and gross inefficiencies analogous to what we see in complex software today.…

[deleted]

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#88

Post by arcbyte »

systems wrote: post #3
browningstreet wrote: post #2

I was once the CTO of a financial services firm that had been founded by a non-technical person. When I was hired the code base was in poor shape. With a bit of guidance we overhauled the codebase in 3 months and swept clean about 15 years of technical debt. They were using a 13 year old version of the compiler. New clients were requiring audits and attestations we wouldn’t have been able to pass. I was able to hire…

"put the donkey, where the owner of the donkey wants you to put the donkey" - egyptian proverb i dont know how much money this company was making, and why it couldnt invest in both backend and client facing communications but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming in other words, i used to always take the dev…

It's a classic problem - there are some people who know exactly what they are talking about and you should trust them, and there are some people who just sound like they know what they're talking about and you should absolutely NOT trust them.

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#89

Post by arcbyte »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #27
browningstreet wrote: post #2

I was once the CTO of a financial services firm that had been founded by a non-technical person. When I was hired the code base was in poor shape. With a bit of guidance we overhauled the codebase in 3 months and swept clean about 15 years of technical debt. They were using a 13 year old version of the compiler. New clients were requiring audits and attestations we wouldn’t have been able to pass. I was able to hire…

Would it be ethical in a situation like this to hide all the technical improvements and just show the increased speed of client facing delivery? Seems like everyone would be happier.

I'm always telling my developers to stop talking to the customer about technical details.

Do you think carpenters talk to their customers about types of nails and dimensional lumber? Or they talk curves, size, and color?

Re: What factors explain the nature of software?

#90

Post by StanStani »

arcbyte wrote: post #88
systems wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"put the donkey, where the owner of the donkey wants you to put the donkey" - egyptian proverb i dont know how much money this company was making, and why it couldnt invest in both backend and client facing communications but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming in other words, i used to always take the dev…

It's a classic problem - there are some people who know exactly what they are talking about and you should trust them, and there are some people who just sound like they know what they're talking about and you should absolutely NOT trust them.

See Honey the Bear's "Metagame" hypothesis. https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html#anchor...
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