So far this has been great, Casey Muratori's talk about the history of OOP aspects of programming has been quite insightful. Will need to revisit when it's on YT.
A software conference that advocates for quality
91–100 of 160 posts
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-ev…
While I agree with everything you've said, I think you might be making an assumption that quality costs time. In my experience this isn't the case, unless you're starting from a low quality codebase or working with low quality people. A high quality team can produce high quality software in less time than it takes a low quality team to produce low quality software meeting the same functional requirements. The whole b…
This isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.
The quality of your team is more-or-less a pre-existing background variable. The question is whether a team of comparable quality takes longer to produce quality software than hacked-together software, and the answer appears to be "yes". The only way out of this is if optimizing more for code quality *actually helps you recruit better engineers*.
I can put a little data to that question, at least. I run a recruiting company that does interviews, so we have data both on preferences and on apparent skill level.
I went and split our data set by whether an engineer indicated that emphasis on code quality was important to them. Our data suggests that you can probably make slightly better hires (in a raw technical-ability sense) by appealing to that candidate pool:
- Candidates who emphasized quality were slightly (non-significantly) more likely to pass our interview and,
- Candidates who emphasized quality were slightly (non-significantly) less likely to have gotten a job already
The effect is pretty small, though, and I doubt it outweighs the additional cost.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#93This thing feels pretty weird to me. I'm guessing it's an attempt at organizing some sort of european Handmade event, and trying to keep it small. But between the sparse website, invite-only and anonymous organizers, it just feels like it's emphasizing the reactionary vibes around the Handmade/casey/jblow sphere. Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything. Glad to…
Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything. There's a reason web developers, and the ecosystem/community around them, are the butt of many jokes. I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
>I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
If it had any effect, it would be negligible compared to offshoring and weak incentives.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-ev…
This is only true in certain contexts. Most of the time software quality is looked over not because it genuinely isnt important but simply because it's hard to perceive. Ive watched many businesses appreciate the benefits of software quality (happy customers, few incidents, fast feature turnaround) without ascribing it to anything in particular. Then, when it went away, they chalked up the problems to something else,…
>At no point in time did they accurately perceive what they had or what they lost, even at the point of bankruptcy.
This is traditionally not only with software, but other kinds of companies too.
Some people are just not quality people.
At this conference there's a presentation encouraging "You should finish your software."
If that's all people did that would be 10x better right there.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#95I think I’ve finally figured out just what is that annoys me about the “software quality” crowd. Quality is a measurement . That’s how it works in hardware land, anyway. Product defects - and, crucially, their associated cost to the company - are quantified Quality is not some abstract, feel good concept like “developer experience”. It’s a real, hard number of how much money the company loses to product defects. Almo…
I notice you have not quantified any aspect of your opinion, here. Which is not surprising, since your opinion is unrelated to facts, science, experience, or wisdom. Quality is not a "real, hard number" because such a thing would depend entirely on how you collect the data, what you count as data, and how you interpret the data. All of this is brimming with controversy, as you might know if you had read more than zer…
I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from this comment, apart from the fact that you’ve sure made a lot of assumptions about me and my experience.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#96I think I’ve finally figured out just what is that annoys me about the “software quality” crowd. Quality is a measurement . That’s how it works in hardware land, anyway. Product defects - and, crucially, their associated cost to the company - are quantified Quality is not some abstract, feel good concept like “developer experience”. It’s a real, hard number of how much money the company loses to product defects. Almo…
Some thoughts regarding this: 1. It is partly because the typical metrics used for software development in big corporations (e.g., test coverage, cyclomatic complexity, etc) are such a snake oil. They are constantly misused and/or misinterpreted by management and because of that cause developers a lot of frustration. 2. Some developers see their craft as a form of art, or at least an activity for "expressing themselv…
1. Totally agree that the field of software metrics is dominated by clueless or outright bad actors. I can say with complete certainty that I do not know the right way to measure software quality. All I know is that quality is handled as a metric in most hardware companies, not an abstract concept. When it’s talked about as such an ephemeral thing by software people, it strikes me as a bit disconnected to reality. (If I was going to try, I’d probably shoot for bugs per release version, or time from first spec to feature release.)
2. With respect: that’s a bit of an exceptionalist mindset. There’s nothing precious about software’s value to a business. It’s a vehicle to make money. That’s not to say craft isn’t important - it is, and it has tangible impacts to work. The point I’m making is that: my boss would laugh me out of the room if I told him “You can’t measure the quality of my electronics designs or my delivery process; it’s art.”
3. I’ve never heard of FPS but I’m very interested in learning more. Thanks for sharing the link.
Edit: oh ok duh yeah of course you could measure the frame rate of your graphics stack and get a metric for code quality. D’oh. Whoops. XD
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-ev…
Companies can sacrifice every thing for "time to market" - optimization, maintainability, security and safety even - but underestimate the costs of doing that. It is actually more a marketing choice than an economic choice. One can be skeptical about the implied statement and leadership/management knows what it is doing beyond delivering at the (arbitrarily) set time. One definition of Quality is to satisfy a need en…
They underestimate how long it takes to turn the boat when lowering operational costs becomes the best avenue to improving revenue.
I think it’s like switching CEOs when the company goes out of startup mode into grownup company. What got you here won’t keep you here.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies can sacrifice every thing for "time to market" - optimization, maintainability, security and safety even - but underestimate the costs of doing that. It is actually more a marketing choice than an economic choice. One can be skeptical about the implied statement and leadership/management knows what it is doing beyond delivering at the (arbitrarily) set time. One definition of Quality is to satisfy a need en…
> but underestimate the costs of doing that Do they? I’ve been fighting against the tide for years until I understood that all of quality this and quality that doesn’t matter. Sure, it sucks to be on the receiving end of buggy software, but this where you vote with your money. At work? Finish the task with least amount of resources and move on.
It’s about momentum. Once you lose it the wheels come off. And at first that’s shipping product, but later on it’s adding new features to the minefield you’ve laid. Until you start clearing the mines your velocity continues to drop.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-ev…
This is only true in certain contexts. Most of the time software quality is looked over not because it genuinely isnt important but simply because it's hard to perceive. Ive watched many businesses appreciate the benefits of software quality (happy customers, few incidents, fast feature turnaround) without ascribing it to anything in particular. Then, when it went away, they chalked up the problems to something else,…
It’s like physical fitness. Try explaining to someone who has never been in shape how it’ll feel to be in shape, and they won’t believe you.
I’ve converted people by building better systems than they’ve seen before. Some balk, but better than half end up getting it and pitching in.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies can sacrifice every thing for "time to market" - optimization, maintainability, security and safety even - but underestimate the costs of doing that. It is actually more a marketing choice than an economic choice. One can be skeptical about the implied statement and leadership/management knows what it is doing beyond delivering at the (arbitrarily) set time. One definition of Quality is to satisfy a need en…
> but underestimate the costs of doing that Do they? I’ve been fighting against the tide for years until I understood that all of quality this and quality that doesn’t matter. Sure, it sucks to be on the receiving end of buggy software, but this where you vote with your money. At work? Finish the task with least amount of resources and move on.
> Finish the task with least amount of resources and move on
which is now claude code...