Nobody Hates Software More Than Software Developers

Let me try to sketch how bad it can get:

In the mid 80's I worked for a game company for about a year (Aackosoft, flightdeck, indy 500 on the Atari) and I inherited a project from another programmer. After reading the code for a couple of days I realized that he'd been planning his 'exit' for a considerable time. The could would assemble (the 68k part) and compile (the C part) but other than that you couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Every variable was named after a vegetable, a fruit or a plant and every subroutine after a famous person.

It took quite a while just to get things back to self documenting names, after that another month or so to restructure it to the point where it started to do what it was intended to do.

There would indeed have been much joy in writing it again, but there was just as much joy in figuring it out and getting it to work.

Awareness of your own limits, and the likely quality of your work, is a good thing.

But this descends into self-flagellation. Waaaah, I suck, you suck, we all suck. We're all the equal-worst programmers EVER.

If you're doing research into programming languages, and you're explaining your work, or asking for funding, fine.

But coming from practicing programmers, it's a common, trite, pointless and irritating refrain containing zero useful information.

I remember that scene from "War of the Roses" where the Danny DeVito character tells the horror story of the Roses to talk a new client out of engaging in an ugly and bitter courtroom battle. I think his line was (paraphrasing here) "when a man who could charge you $250 an hour wants to tell you something for free, you should listen."

I often feel that way about software. Remember the stages of a software project?

1) wild enthusiasm 2) profound disillusionment 3) search for the guilty 4) punishment of the innocent 5) rewards and accolades for the non-participants

Can't remember exactly where I read that, but software developers have experienced them all, over and over.

I don't necessarily try to talk people out of a new development effort. After all, there are clearly times when we need to write software, and some projects are smashing successes. But I kind of feel like that breed of lawyer who tries to get clients to see litigation as a true last resort.

I say - is there anything already out there that could solve your problems without a new development effort? How far would a much simpler approach go toward solving your problems - could you live with it? Basically, I want clients to understand just how risky a full blown development effort truly is.

Of course, if you need business... well, nothing like an angry divorce to keep the billable hours up, and nothing like a flailing software project funded by deep pockets to keep the cash flow positive....

Get out, see the world, look at other peoples' code (particularly the stuff they don't release publicly), and I can guarantee you will be surprised at what people can make run.

I believe there is a saying that there will always be [code] better than [yours]. The opposite is also true: There is always code out there which is worse than yours.