What factors explain the nature of software?
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Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#2I 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 a few seasoned engineers to begin working on the next pass over the monolithic core design. We needed to prepare for a container and cloud based future, given where our clients were going.
The founder just complained and complained. He couldn’t accept that we were working on things the client couldn’t see. I spent a lot of time negotiating for a percentage of total velocity for core design changes.. the rest of our time and effort would be focused on things the customers were demanding and which the founder thought we should focus on.
We had increased velocity about 2000% already. He wanted 4000%. We needed sprints for back end redeployments. Founder was visibly angry when he overheard us taking about refactoring back end things like deployment scripts and data architecture.
Senior engineer gave him a copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, just to share something that could lead to some kind of common vocabulary. Founder spent weekend marking up his copy and on Monday firmly announced that he rejected the text in whole.
Senior engineer quit on the spot and walked out.
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#3I 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 side in stories like this, but overtime i learn to be more sympathetic to the clients, i have been in situations where the devs overestimated the value of cleaner architecture, its a financial service, not a software company, i think the real solution would have been to completely outsource the software development
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#4I 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…
What is The Cathedral and the Bazaar about? I couldn't quite tell from a cursory glance.
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#5I 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…
I think you are both right.
But I don't think GP was ignoring clients. If anything, he was doing what those clients wanted by moving to containers and a cloud architecture. And I say that as someone that doesn't like those things.
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#6I 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…
What is The Cathedral and the Bazaar about? I couldn't quite tell from a cursory glance.
Disclaimer: been a while since I read it.
It compares two software development styles. It compares typical software dev in a company to building a cathedral: directions come from on high, and you execute your task.
Then it compares typical Open Source development, such as with the Linux kernel, and compares it to a bazaar: everyone is doing their own thing, but somehow, things get done.
It's old, and maybe a little outdated now that the corporate world has taken over Open Source, but I would still suggest reading it.
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#7I 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…
How did you measure velocity?
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#8I 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…
How did you measure velocity?
count(work unit) / count(intervals)
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#9I 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 engineering.
Re: What factors explain the nature of software?
#10Earlier 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…
I think you are both right. But I don't think GP was ignoring clients. If anything, he was doing what those clients wanted by moving to containers and a cloud architecture. And I say that as someone that doesn't like those things.
I've never seen outsourcing of a company's core product result in anything but litigation. If a team legitimately made a 2000% leap in throughput and it wasn't just from manipulating metrics, and then that still wasn't good enough then nothing will be satisfactory in the eyes of that owner, you rightfully should give up that battle and find greener pastures. Expecting someone to come in and wave a magic wand of 4000% productivity is absurd. Expecting that you can outsource that sort of demand is plain stupid.