[lug] Developer abuse

[Wagner, Carl]

I often see comparisons between the building trades and software
development.  The problem is it does not work.  If you turn the
comparison around it would be, that if any one brick was slightly
misplaced the whole building would collapse.  That is what happens in
software.   How often does the foundation of the building explode (OS
Crash), or a crane go berserk (library bug)?   What is the building
equivalent of the Program Counter, Stack Pointer etc?   What is the
building equivalent of damaged (flakey - but not destroyed) transistors
in chips due to static discharge?
How often do they change the size of the materials, like bricks (API
changes)?

>From a different tact, how may iron workers get sucked into 4 hour daily
meetings to discuss how the building has been massively redesigned when
it is 90% complete?   How often do they start buildings without the
blueprints being started? (We don't have time to properly design the
software so we will fill the details in as we go!)  I would love to see
a building being built with the lack of detail that programmers are
regularly asked to do when working on a software project.

I have spent some time thinking about how software could be developed in
a more predictable and consistent fashion.  The problem is that every
project is different.  I am not talking about moving the location of a
few walls and windows, but using completely different materials for each
building.  EVERY brick will be a different size and shape.  How much
would it add to the cost of a house to use 2/3 scale bricks, made by
hand, one at a time?  To make development more predictable, languages
would need to increase 2 or more levels of abstraction (like going from
assembly to c++ 2 times).   But then the functions/wigets (bricks) would
never provide everything you need and you would have to revert back to
lower levels. (Making bricks by hand)

Just my 2 cents.

Carl.
I like the (Building|House|Mall), but could you move it 10 feet to the
north!!



-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us
[mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us] On Behalf Of Bill Thoen
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 1:38 PM
To: Dean.Brissinger at vexcel.com; Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group --
General Mailing List
Subject: Re: [lug] Developer abuse

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Dean Brissinger wrote:

> Neat.  Seen any articles that are more general though?  This is an

Yes... they're everywhere. There's whole libraries of books on the
subject 
of software project planning and management, and how poorly it's done,
and 
how that always results in death marches, blown budgets, lousy software,

diverse alarums and such.

How come software projects seem to be so hard to estimate correctly?
Civil
engineers have standard practices and procedures and when they build a
20-story building, they generally know how much it's going to cost and
when it will be done -- in advance of the first brick being laid upon 
another -- and also they are relatively sure that if some 14-year
old kid sneaks in the back door some day that he isn't going to be able
to
drop the building like a house of cards by pushing the elevator buttons
in
an unexpected order.

But I've yet to see very many software developers do much more than pay
lip service to project planning. How come it's so typical that they're
so
bad at it?  Why do they accept unrealistic deadlines and budgets, or are
they just unable to plan a software project?  Is it because the tools
keep
changing so fast that no one learns to get good at today's patterns
becuase tomorrow's completely new and different world will force you to
re-learn new patterns all over again? 

But if you ask me, anyone who lets himself or herself get used by a 
company to work 85-hour weeks as a standard operating practice for only 
40-hour's pay to make up for rotten planning is kind of a fool.

- Bill Thoen


> On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 11:35, Mike Stanczyk wrote:
> > Some of us were talking before the meeting about how developers are
> > abused in today workplace.
> > 
> > http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.html
> > 

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