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You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

mrlacey.com

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Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#231

Post by MBCook »

caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

We had a hard and fast rule at my last job. ALL demos were either 100% real, or were mock-ups from Balsamiq. If it looked like someone doodled it on paper we didn’t have to worry it would be taken as working.

We came to this rule after far too many incidents where some sort of mock up (Photoshop, HTML, whatever) was shown and taken as done. Then we got the questions (possibly unhappily) about where it was and when it would be done because obviously ”it must be” since we “showed it”.

The rule served us incredibly well for years. It put a hard stop to all miscommunication. Everyone understood exactly where we were in the project. Either we knew what it was going to look like, or (if it was ready) it was done and awaiting their approval.

Shortly before I left we got a new graphic designer. He wasn’t embedded with the programmers. He didn’t know THE RULE. Sure enough, we were asked why a design we’d never seen before wasn’t ready yet. Because he made a mock up in Photoshop. He told them it was a mock up. Doesn’t matter.

We basically follow THE RULE at my current job. It still works wonders.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#232

Post by satyrnein »

hutzlibu wrote: post #212
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

Today I gave advice to wifes friend friend. Who wants to build something "like ebay or amazon". (but cannot programm and wants to contract) Well, after a while they understood, there is a small difference, between a website - and a virtual market place. Seriously, it is easy to forget, that for most people, all these technical things - is just dark magic in a black box. Which sometimes work and sometimes won't. And I…

I find it useful to tell people around how many engineers that company has. They won't understand why, but they may understand that they don't understand.

I also point out when a requested feature actually exists as a whole company.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#233

Post by Jtsummers »

neatze wrote: post #202
Jtsummers wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Program logic error: // return the maximum value from an array return array.min(); Specification error: Only users with role X can access this content. [where X should've been Y] In the former case, a test should catch it (because the code isn't doing what we believe, per spec, it should be doing). In the latter case, only validation (confirming with customers) can catch it. Any test that is run against the code will…

What happens in case where specification is: [User inputs X1, system displays Y] On system crash user input was X2. Is this specification or program logic error ?

I generally consider system stability an assumed part of the specification. Your system should handle most input errors from users more gracefully than a crash. Specifications are never as detailed as the program. So a description of what it should accept implies what it shouldn't. The questions for the programmer when faced with invalid input are:

1. Should it crash? (almost always no)

2. Should it process the garbage input as though it were valid? (pushing the input validation problem further down and potentially causing issues in random locations of the program)

3. Should it reject the input and request a different input? (probably)

Once you get to 3 you've got a number of ways to re-prompt the user or indicate that the input is invalid in a way that won't crash the program. You may need to go back to the customer to figure out their preferred resolution. But crashing is almost certainly not what they want and a sign of a program error (not specification error).

I would classify it as a specification error if they told us X1 would work, and then supplied X2 in a way that was close enough to pass most validation, but not close enough to work correctly.

Like, "The data format is a series of messages. Each message consists of up to 512 16-bit words. Word 0 specifies the length of the message, including itself." and then it turns out that word 0 specifies the length excluding itself causing us to not grab enough data in the first message, and then random amounts of data after that.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#234

Post by xwdv »

hutzlibu wrote: post #212
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

Today I gave advice to wifes friend friend. Who wants to build something "like ebay or amazon". (but cannot programm and wants to contract) Well, after a while they understood, there is a small difference, between a website - and a virtual market place. Seriously, it is easy to forget, that for most people, all these technical things - is just dark magic in a black box. Which sometimes work and sometimes won't. And I…

There doesn't have to be a difference, you can throw up a static list of items with price descriptions and a number you can text to purchase things.

This is how we used to sell drugs in college. It was a simple URL you could go to with pricing and you just sent texts to a burner phone to arrange a transaction.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#236

Post by MBCook »

alexbanks wrote: post #98
kevsim wrote: post #5

Do people actually have fights like this with management at their companies? Not trying to knock the author, but I'm just surprised anyone would actually hear this kind of comment in 2020. I'd think by now any and all metrics tying lines of code to productivity would be long dead.

Yes. The industry moves at a snail's pace, and is very different from what you'd read on HN. A huge % of dev jobs are still using old software/processes, with managers that haven't written software in 20 years, if at all. In 2014 I worked at a company that switched to Git and then started measuring LoC to assess performance/involvement. Engineers took to committing/removing things like node_modules directories to mak…

My company has just started to use Git in the last year. No timeline yet on when existing projects (like mine) will be migrated.

I agree with you 100%.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#237

Post by MBCook »

silveroriole wrote: post #55
archi42 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly hear a friend complain about BS like this and variants. "Why did adding a button take a week, it's just a button?!" is also very popular. Not sure what's worse, that or the recurring "that element should be 1px to the left, drop everything you're working on and fix it asap"...

A funny side-effect of this that I ran into: customers who went to tortuous lengths to avoid requesting a new page or button, because they’d had that past experience of ‘just a button’ taking 2 weeks. They still wanted all the new functionality, but glued onto the existing pages/buttons because they thought it would save time! An interesting misunderstanding :)

See that all the time. It’s why you need proper requirements gathering, to get past that kind of thing.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#238

Post by pjgalbraith »

mirekrusin wrote: post #128

This is achilles heel of non-tech managers. You can link as many articles like that as you want, it will still be a problem. They may be more aware of it, but it will still be, daily struggle. Non-tech manager should be paired with tech-lead with high trust relationship for this not to be a problem. This example is just one case/symptom of much larger problem. Non-tech managers will only see fast progress on combinat…

This rings very true to me. Unfortunately the subtleties of development like code quality aren't well represented if you only look at cards moving on a board.

In a lot of ways what you are describing is how it should work, that the tech lead works on the hard problems and big-picture problems, like abstractions and architectural issues, as well as mentoring junior devs.

In my opinion any manager (especially a non-technical one) should only measure the team as a unit. This is particularly important when evaluating the performance of a tech lead.

One thing I like to look for is natural lines of conflict in a situation that can arise when different individuals are working towards different goals, and question the underlying reasons why a manager may be acting the way they are. In a lot of cases you can get to a win-win situation if everyone is willing to play ball. Of course if the conflict arises from a fundamental organisational flaw, like poor management methods, or poor company culture, then it is time to move on.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#239

Post by DougWebb »

zachrose wrote: post #194
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

I sometimes look at small mass-produced plastic items and marvel at how hard it would be to make one from scratch. If you showed me, say, a fluted plastic bottle of wite-out with a screw-on cap, I would have to assume you had a very expensive operation up and running that was already churning these out. In software we can put a few shapes on a screen in just the right context and people will believe there's an operat…

You could spend a few hours making a 3D print of that bottle to produce a very believable mock-up. And then use it with someone gullible to make a deal on an order to manufacture a million of them. You get your commission on the sale, toss the 3D print to your manufacturing engineer, and let them know the customer needs delivery next week.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#240

Post by zebnyc »

hutzlibu wrote: post #212
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

Today I gave advice to wifes friend friend. Who wants to build something "like ebay or amazon". (but cannot programm and wants to contract) Well, after a while they understood, there is a small difference, between a website - and a virtual market place. Seriously, it is easy to forget, that for most people, all these technical things - is just dark magic in a black box. Which sometimes work and sometimes won't. And I…

Classic buy vs build! Are you sure that they were not looking for a simple eCommerce site made using Shopify/BigCommerce?

Maybe they are just looking for a side hustle.

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