Academic exercises (was: Re: [lug] File modification)

[John Karns]

On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Sean Reifschneider said:

> The people I've worked with on software projects, who were fresh out of
> school (at the bachelors and masters levels) were developing code which
> looked to me like they were still turning in programs which had to work
> once and would never be looked at again.

My experience as a db app programmer in the corporate world was the same,
only it wasn't from people just out of school.  There was pressure to get
the program done with virtually no consideration given to maintainability
of the code afterward.  In fact, one of the lead people created a core
program that was an absolute nightmare for anyone else to make heads or
tails of, much less maintain.  He left some months after completing it,
and it fell to others to keep it going.

Of course, it all depends on the management people in charge of the
development, and in my particular case it may have been a particularly
poor situation; but my take was that corporate management on the whole is
very oblivious to this sort of thing, and rewards those who get the code
done - with little or no consideration given to long term maintenance
issues.  I would imagine though, that the picture might not be so bleak
with co's whose business is software oriented, or those who may supply
such code to others outside of their organization.

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John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net