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A software conference that advocates for quality

bettersoftwareconference.com

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Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#101

Post by hinkley »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #94
pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We are getting to the point where people don’t even do the “make it right” part of Make it Work, Make it Right, Make it Fast. It’s making it tough to push for the latter when you can’t even get Right out of some people.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#102

Post by wiseowise »

hinkley wrote: post #98
wiseowise wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Until you start clearing the mines your velocity continues to drop.

I've been doing this for decades, it's never a problem. Either velocity tanks in which case there's a short period where company invests into improving it, or people leave.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#103

Post by pydry »

qznc wrote: post #70
ozim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like all the fitness content. Get couple shredded guys and gals to show off how fit they are so everyone feels guilty they are snacking past 8PM. Sell another batch of “how to do pushups” followed by “how to do pushups vol.2” with “pushup pro this time even better”. Where in the end normal people are not getting paid for getting shredded, they get paid for doing their stuff. I just constantly feel like I am not…

You could switch into a domain where safety-critical software is developed. Here devs complain about the inverse problem: Why are we required to have 100% test coverage?! (The answer btw: Because nobody would be able to explain to a jury/judge that 80% or whatever is enough)

Or they complain that they know everything has gone to hell but if they blow the whistle revenge will be taken against them.

Everybody who worked with the 2005 Toyota Camry ETCS would have known what was up when it killed a few people, for example. Nobody can work on spaghetti code of that magnitude and not realize that something is off.

Boeing employees who tried to blow the whistle were similarly ignored or silenced while a few died in mysterious circumstances.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#104

Post by NohatCoder »

fzeindl wrote: post #52

What is needed is more evidence based software engineering. Statistical methods applied to datasets correlating issue trackers with code ASTs to show us exactly which ways of coding are correlated with longer issue times, frequent bugs etc. I sometimes wonder if there could be an optimal number of microservices. As far as I know no one has connected issue data to the number of microservices before. Maybe there‘s an o…

Depending on who you ask the answer is either "It depends completely on the task, and it is in any case much more important that you divide your application in the right places than exactly how many bits you end up with", or "1".

If you ask Amazon then the more the merrier, because the number of microservices is effectively a multiplier on the bill.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#105

Post by [deleted] »

hinkley wrote: post #98
wiseowise wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#106

Post by akst »

astrobe_ wrote: post #78
rachofsunshine wrote: post #74

Earlier 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…

> Companies can sacrifice every thing for "time to market" - optimization, maintainability, security and safety even - but underestimate the costs of doing that

If you're working at a company who disregards safety and security good luck getting them to care about clean code and efficiency.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#107

Post by rizzom5000 »

wiseowise wrote: post #102
hinkley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Until you start clearing the mines your velocity continues to drop. I've been doing this for decades, it's never a problem. Either velocity tanks in which case there's a short period where company invests into improving it, or people leave.

I've seen projects that failed, or were killed, likely at least in part due to a culture that encouraged poor quality and tech debt. This is preventable, and for no additional up-front engineering effort or time investment.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#108

Post by esafak »

wiseowise wrote: post #87
astrobe_ wrote: post #78

Earlier 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.

At work the buyer is not the user, so be sure to hound the buyer when he saddles you with crap.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#109

Post by esafak »

pydry wrote: post #77
rachofsunshine wrote: post #74

Earlier 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,…

> ... even at the point of bankruptcy

It that were always the case we could bask in the joy that the problem sorted itself out, but alas, there's a lot of crap that keeps on going.

Re: A software conference that advocates for quality

#110

Post by esafak »

ozim wrote: post #73
zoover2020 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you skip unit tests? Especially in the AI age. You can quickly verify your behavior. Also, by not writing them you're also missing out on opportunities to modularize your code. Obviously, this assumes you write enterprise grade code. YMMV

You can write modular code without writing tests - I write testable code - I don't write tests. When I need I can always add them back, but I tend to skip it as mostly it doesn't make sense. But still cottage industry of "clean code" is pushing me into self doubts and shame.

If it's testable it's trivial to write tests for! You don't want the next person to introduce a bug, do you?
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