Notes From the Cathedral 209
A reader wrote to us about "Notes From The Cathedral", which is sort of a tell-all from a former developer of a "major software company". An interesting, if somewhat sad, read.
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Notes From the Cathedral
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Too much of everything is just enough. -- Bob Wier
Re:this article is painfully bad (Score:1)
Re:Cathedral has one good thing going for it: Focu (Score:1)
Heh. I had exactly the same response to his comment! It creeps me out every time I hear someone mention focus at work.
If you haven't read A Deepness In The Sky [amazon.com] get it now.
Govt does code reviews (Score:5)
1) Big 'ol binder that had coding style, approved APIs, things like that
2) All the functions must declare inputs, outputs, and globals used before you even start coding. These declarations also make it into the code.
3) That pseudocode goes through a peer review with coders from other facilities.
4) Once the code is written, it goes through another peer review, and there are usually a few rewrites after that review.
The reason for much of this is *this* is the code that runs 170+ hospitals around the country. Don't want rogue code screwing up the systems.
The upshot out of all this is that the code is extremely easy to update, easy to debug, and the support people have an easier job.
Re:Cathedral has one good thing going for it: Focu (Score:1)
Most commercial projects of 300+ people fail to complete. The failure rate goes up exponentially as the size increases.
Very few 300 person projects would take only 6 months - you just cannot ramp up that quickly and maintain any sort of coherence.
A good example would be MSFT Word for Windows 1.0. Took over 5 years but the plan never said it was more than 1 year from completion. ("Rapid Development" by Steve McConnell has the details).
Most commercial products are abandonded by their vendors. A key decision factor when buying a product is - will this vendor be around in 12 months? The idea that in buying a commercial product you are buying an assurance of future upgrades would be laughable were it not so serious.
Even within one company I have had the same company offer me three different and incompatible products in three successive years for the same problem.
Re:Coding in the "real world" (Score:3)
That might be a (loose) specification, it might be a partial prototype. If that's what you'd think of as a design then I'd rather not work with you if that's OK.
Design needs to be many things which that simply cannot be. It needs to go over the requirements that have been established and properly sort out what needs to be done to sort these out. The structure needs working out, the interfaces need specification. If all you have is a vague description of the issue and a code fragment you really can't expect to sort out the design with any serious chance of success. After a while of designing the system that way you can expect to hit problems as what is a fundamental feature of one component's implementation may become a block to another working. Whereas if it's been properly designed and analysed the chance of this happening is substantially lower.
The other side is that, when it comes to maintaining the software, your approach to design means there's no concrete explanation of exactly why something does what it does - or even what's there. By forcing the maintainers to work out the code with no substantial, clear documentation to explain what's going on, you end up with a much larger effort and a lower probability of success as the maintainers aren't necessarily going to pick up on the subtelties. After all, look back at code you wrote a while back. How well can you understand it at first reading, undocumented? And you wrote it.
You _really_ need more documentation and design than that if you're going to do a seriously good job, long-term.
Re:Cathedral has one good thing going for it: Focu (Score:2)
Commercial development says you pick some features, set a time-frame, and come hell or high water, you will make that release (you can miss, but only with grave consequences.)
OSS development says pikc some features, come up with a ballpark as to when each feature might be done, and start working. Gradually make release as features are implemented, allowing time for the system to evolve and improve. New features migh creep in because of consequences of the development, but eventually you have a 'stable release'.
Now what's the difference? Besides the quality of the implementation, which OSS has proven can be quite high in comparison to Commercial software, the real difference is release schedules and targets.
Commercial development has a single goal: The Release. OSS development has multiple goals: getting features to work well. Release early and release often means that you don't really have The Release. You just release 'snapshots' as the code evolves. One reason it works because by the time you get to The Release, you have committed to a number of architecture and design decisions that might interfere with implementation down the road. However, frequent, incremental releases allow the code to mature faster, because things are fine grained.
Thus, it's true that the Cathedral gets something out the door, and its often of lower quality, because that is the goal - getting it out the door. But the OSS world is different - The Release is really a concept that doesn't exist; the focus is just on getting features correct and then making a release.
Re:Other downsides of the Cathedral... (Score:2)
- In this paper, I will relate my experiences in the Cathedral to attempt to explain why the Open Source model produces better software.
Since the author is trying to make a useful comparison between the two models, I assumed that the situations were similar. The Cathedral model usually entails others using the product (so the author can make money).Bazaar = loud group of people consuming and participating in things that interest them
Also, code reviews were mentioned in the article. They don't seem very useful if you're the only one who's going to use or maintain the program.
Re:Missing link? (Score:1)
Jeremiah, you missed, that's a link to part #2...he wanted part #3. Don't worry, I've made silly mistakes like that too. And it's not your fault you were modded up.
-David T. C.
Mirror (Score:1)
Open source rocks. Closed source sucks. Any other argument is mere bigotry and ignorance.
Blind cheerleading doesn't help anything (Score:3)
So why hasn't Open Source shown itself to be an across the board win? I can think of a few reasons:
1. While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber, there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers. There's much enthusiasm, yes, but there's a pervasive reliance in staying up all night and writing lots and lots of code to fix problems. As such, there's just as much code and feature bloat in the open source world as in this so-called cathedral, including the lack of reliability that comes with such practices. It's not like thousands of people are wanting to sift through voluminous and poorly written code to fix bugs.
2. The "scratch an itch" philosophy applied to programming tools, but it doesn't seem to be applying to other applications. There's a definite "We've gotta out do Microsoft!" mantra, resulting in people working on UIs who know nothing about UI design, and students working on applications without understanding the intended user base.
3. For reasons that still aren't clear, there's a startling lack of creativity in the open source world. There's a lot of copying existing commercial software, but when that isn't the goal there's much floundering about. Look at the attempts to write free games. You certainly could write a game that isn't Tetris, Asteroids, Missile Command, Arkanoid, Tron lightcyles, etc., but there's no desire. The desire is to have an engineering problem to work on, not to create.
both models have problems (Score:1)
For starters, it does suffer from exactly the same shortage of coders as industry; probably the shortage is even more acute, since industry pays so much more in most cases. We gotta eat, remember! I'd expect that even the ratio of incompetent coders to good ones is just as bad, and that the difference is that no one uses really bad open source software. It is likely also mitigated by the lack of deadline pressures, though, so do mark that as a small advantage for open development.
With regards to fixes and features, I think that there isn't really any big advantage there for open source. Getting a patch into a release is much simpler than in the closed commercial world, particularly if dealing with software from external suppliers, but what of the features covered? They have to be ones that scratch the itch of someone who writes code. Why has it taken so long to get even the inklings of a decent open source word processor (and lets face it, StarOffice-under-new-name is more bloated but less featureful than MS Office)? I rarely write long documents, and when I do, I'm happy using LaTeX, a programming language, to write them. That just isn't an itch that we get very often. The difference is even bigger when considering stuff like special software for musicians.
Ok, that's that, and please don't take this as a rant against the open source development model. It obviously works well, often. So does closed commercial development. Both models have big problems, and neither is vastly superior; the two can exist in parallel. Perhaps the can even have a symbiotic relation, who knows?
Re:notes from my cathedral (Score:1)
It's amazing how many otherwise rational adults don't understand that you can't gain immense productivity today without accepting significant costs in the future. I'm not opposed to working on internet time for V1.0 of a product, as long as customers, marketing, etc. realize that the cost of "internet time" is that the cycle time for V2.0 will be about four times as long, as we fix all the mistakes from the first release.
OK, I lied - I personally would be opposed to working like that, because I'd rather do things right once than half-right n times, but as long as you're not easily bored it might work for you :)
The embedded marketplace (where I'm at) is a little nicer right now - since you're more closely tied to the HW which doesn't change instantly, there's not as much push to turn the accompanying SW on a dime. Really, until the world at large understands that building quality SW requires the same sort of overhead as building a bridge, we'll never really have the time to do things right. Software is magic to most people, and magic just takes a wave of the wand, right?
Re:Uh Oh (Score:1)
Re:It's not just coding (Sad Truth) (Score:3)
Computers are gadgets that require specific instructions to reach specific objectives.
People who know how to give specific instructions and objectives often become programmers, because they are well-suited to the work.
Non-programmers are often people incapable of expressing ideas with the mathematical accuracy that computers require. That's why they hire programmers.
If you are a programmer working directly under a non-programmer boss, it is your job to translate between their fuzzy ideas and the computer's concrete logic.
Programmers who can make this difficult transition are the ones who get paid huge salaries to be project leaders.
Programmers who can't do it are probably better off working for one of those project leaders, so they will be safely isolated from the sort of people who picked on them in Junior High School.
it isn't about logging a lot of hours (Score:1)
the code should do the talking not the hours
it is about working smarter not harder!
About meeting deadlines (Score:1)
dudle
Re:Why does it sound... (Score:1)
Enjoy!
PS: After a month, I am still looking for a job though!Re:Why of course, they are not mutually exclusive (Score:1)
In this respect, Open Source takes advantage of the same forces that capitalism does in order to produce and innovate. In capitalism, the selfish pursuit of individual desires and needs results in a system with high efficiency at producing these things and exchanging them between those who would benefit by the trade. On the other hand, planned economies suffer from having to guess what the market desires and are in a position where they aren't free to innovate or try new things because they effect too many people. Also, they suffer from inefficiency due to the required bureaucracy and administrative structure.
Similarly, the difficulty with commercial software is based on bureaucratic inefficiency, poor incentives to make radical changes to software, and the need to try and gauge the needs and desires of a large audience. Open Source, on the other hand, is driven by numerous individuals coding for their own selfish needs and tends to produce much more innovative software, more quickly and efficiently. Also, the same complaints are levelled at capitalism and Open Source: they are strict meritocracies where the incompetant suffer and humanitarian concerns (like feeding the hungry and getting computer illiterates online) can fall by the wayside.
And who said Open Source was communistics? :)
Eric Christian Berg
Re:This is why Linux will never go mainstream desk (Score:2)
Really? All my users hate the paper clip dude with a passion. And they are by no means techies. Many of them think they are turning the computer off when they switch of their monitor. :)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
this article is painfully bad (Score:3)
I'm sorry, but come on. The way that is worded is so silly.. "You don't care what operating system you program for???".. I thought it was called being a versatile programmer, not a whore. It's only being a prostitue if you maintain a really sad, religious devotion to your OS of choice.
And noone tell me "it was a joke", becuase if you read the article, it isn't. That thing isn't funny at all. This guy is the definition of an overzealous open source nut.
sig:
Code reviews -- formatted (Score:3)
Code reviews can only be a waste of time, if the staff are anal. You have to be willing to give up some privacy to put the software ahead of personal interests. Currently the number one enemy of open source is self importance. Look at your company, and you'll see why! It's not security... it's the damn fools who are afraid to stand up and be recognized for their controbutions, or the guys who are afraid the rest of the staff are copying.
This does not apply in a rich social environment.
If you are lucky enough to find yourself working for a company that permits open source, then you may find yourself walking a short plank to corporate security repromands. Be sure you know the limitations of what can and can not be made public, and where such data can be published, and get it in writing from your boss.
There's more. What the open source movement means to me, is a freedom from reinventing the wheel, with knowledge as a tradeoff. No matter how plain your source is, someone in some place can use it to make themselves look good by copying your style.
Take the open source movement a step further; involve Napster and we have a real use for the technology that has every record label peeved.
Sorcery -- a program for finding source code on the internet.
Spread the love!
Re:Blind cheerleading doesn't help anything (Score:1)
Linus has proven himself to be a competent coder but a less-than-average software engineer since the latter involves much more than mere coding. Linus's design skills and particularly his attitudes toward other elements of correct process would surely earn him negative marks at any reputable software company.
That said, there are many great programmers in OSS. RMS, ESR, Alan Cox, and Larry Wall all produce fantastic amounts of code while maintaining quality that's above average (though sometimes only slightly so). My favorite is Guido van Rossum, who also manages to maintain truly excellent quality in his work. The thing is, though, that there are also very many excellent programmers in the commercial world. Kernighan, Ritchie, Thompson, Pike et al. did a lot of pretty good work at AT&T. James Gosling has done some cool stuff at Sun. There are hundreds more well-known examples, but none of us have time for the whole list. For every well-known example, too, there are a dozen totally unknown examples. Many companies have one or more gurus whose abilities can match any of the Big Names. Everyone in the company knows who they are, but more often than not they're utterly unknown to outsiders (unless you happen to meet them at a conference, which is why conferences are often worthwhile).
It's a fallacy to say there are more good programmers in open-source that in close-source just because you see more. It may have a lot more to do with where you're looking, where you are unable to look, etc. than with the actual distribution of talent.
Re:Coding in the "real world" (Score:2)
Hey Michelangelo, could you re-paint the ceiling? Use whatever colors you want, just get it done by next week...ok? I'll let you know what kind of faces we'd like after the progress meeting next Monday.
Think about it, look at it. (Score:2)
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
Re:Govt does code reviews (Score:2)
APIs were designed by the kernel group (we were using MUMPS, if you know what that is) and there was a central kernel that was really a combination of what we could think of as libc (common routines and functions) and the kernel itself (other processes that were running that tied it all together). The idea behind the coding style was so that the written code could work on anything from a 20-year-old VAX to a state-of-the-art Alpha machine or even an x86 box, with M implementations that ran all over the place.
Yes, it's least comon denomonator code, but it works, which is somewhat important if you're running a hospital, and want easy support and maintenance.
hrm (Score:2)
That is something I never understood. You got some person that goes to business school or 4-6 years (if they even went to school in some cases) that didn't take 1 single computer corse in college. Yet these are the people making the biggest and most crictical judgements that will effect the software the most.
The biggest thing IMHO is to have a solid well thought out, logical designed program on paper before you hit the code.
My theogry is if you get the "master hackers" give them a program specs and then change them every 2 weeks, the software is going to come out a peice of junk.
But if you take a group of "alright coders" and give them solid program specs, then the program is going to come out decent. (proved they come up with a though out design)
Why don't big companies fire a lot of managers? Seriously, what good are they, they just end up fsck everything up. Why not replace management (or even the CEO!) with the "head programmer" that knowns what needs to be done for a quality product.
If you look at say idsoftware, isn't that mostly run by hackers (wheather programer, artist, modeler, etc). They produced one of the most visually stunning games these year, made a decent amount of cash off of it (are there stock holders bitching? are they public?). Why couldn't this type of envoirment exist within other companeis?
Seriously, why the hell do they need THAT MANY managers in a company, screw em, fire em and hire more IT staff.
Re:Is this CMM? (Score:2)
SEI/CMM can be different, though. CMM is a way to categorize a project environment from no process (CMM level 0) to a cross-department consistant and complete process (CMM level 5). This covers all stages of a project, and while it is used by technical groups, it is really a project management tool.
CMM does *not* dictate how the process works, or how detailed it is, only that a process exists and that it is documented (CMM level 1 and above). The process may be audited, but it does cover all areas in a project except for customer relations -- from design through development, dba, test, and deployment as well as maintenance.
Unfortunately, CMM levels 1 and above can be achieved as goals in themselves...and not to increase actual quality. CMM is usually left as an exercise for the QA/VV&T/Test group to go through...and then usually as an after thought.
Primarily it acts as a check box on a contract -- and people don't get paid if they can't show any documentation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- it can save some projects and increase quality -- but it is usually just make-work and has no real value. The only thing that can make it worth something is care and attention.
Just like ISO 9000, you can have a good process and a bad project and bisa-versa.
Re:Proud to be a 'technology prostitute' (Score:2)
So if I were to offer you a competetive salary to write and maintain an accounting package that automatically maintained a double set of books -- the real set, and the one you show to the film/music artists when they demand a royalty audit -- you'd do it? Without even a moment's hesitation?
How about an email spamming package? Would you do that?
Schwab
Re:notes from my cathedral (Score:2)
I always thought I was lazy or anal trying to design and picture and rationalize all my decisions before coding.
Sheesh. I wish people here would understand that a semi-formal (standardized even!) design process is not contrary to being a hacker.
Re:Ahhh, Someone help me!!@#! (Score:2)
Hire a contractor. Seriously.
Temps are often used for development (IMHO foolish) but one thing that they can do with relatively little preparation is design reviews. They come in with no other commitments, no agendas, and plenty of focus: they are there to review, period.
The value of process (Score:4)
Now I'm working for a small, relatively young company, just starting to ramp up from when it was just a coder or two. I was looking for change, and I found it. Now, code reviews are few and far between, the customer may see a design spec (if they are technically saavy), and test plans are usually incomplete or so vague you could pass them with "HelloWorld" if you squint.
And I find myself missing a lot of the benefits of having a real process, despite the increased paperwork. As we ramp up, we're trying to instill the same kind of discipline that we've seen work at other companies, without sacrificing that ever so important "internet-time" project scope. It may seem to save time to drop all that overhead, but in the long run, the code you write is higher quality, more maintainable, and has fewer bugs than the stuff you crank out blindly...
I read "The Mythical Man-Month" last spring, and was shocked at how much of it was almost directly applicable to many of the small companies I've seen. Too much work for too few people, poorly documented and only margionally tested.
But to get back to the topic, OSS isn't always the solution. Many of the projects I've worked on couldn't be open sourced... too many proprietary issues, government content, or built to work with expensive, proprietary, third-party systems almost no OSS developer would have experience with, let alone have a personal copy of to test the software.
And when OSS won't work for you, the important thing to do is identify the pieces that OSS has that you don't, like lots of peer review, and institute a way to make use of those things.
Re:KIS economic solution (Score:2)
Or, as I like to say, "Time wounds all heels."
Interesting Revenue Tactic (Score:2)
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Question: Should
Is Hemos getting a cut of the dimes we're throwing the author's way? =)
Re:9 to 5 (Score:5)
IMHO if you bought a child into this world it better be your top priority in life to make sure it gets raised properly, responsibly, and lovingly. Anything else has got to be pretty far down on your list of things to do.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
There are no 9-to5ers (Score:4)
Well, there are if you mean 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Why does it sound... (Score:3)
like this originally ended with "For these reason, I QUIT!"
Commercial vs. OSS (Score:4)
A project will usually succeed if there are enough skillful hackers to "carry" the rest of the team. Why are there "also-rans" writing commercial software ? Well, it's a job, and often highly-paid too. Often people's circumstances change - keen hackers can lose the urge if other things take over in their lives - having kids, for example, or other personal issues. And bad management can be a hell of a demotivation. Also, let's face it, there are plenty of bullsh*tters in our industry.
But why is OSS better ? Because there are no (or at least much fewer also-rans). Many (most?) people write OSS software because it's enjoyable. People who enjoy coding are usually good at it. Are they good at it because they enjoy it, or do they enjoy it because they're good at it ? I don't know. But OSS, almost by its very nature, has attracted, and will continue to attract very good technical brains.
-
Linux - the Unix defragmentation tool.
Ahhh, Someone help me!!@#! (Score:2)
More over the entire *look* of the application is controlled by our 'marketing/PR/graphics arm'.
I am vaguely aware of how a properly structured software development firm should run, but it seems there are so few people out there who run big projects who still write quality software to teach. I have no problem learning and participating in these type of reviews. I think they are good I have even bugged my boss to do so a couple of times. Every morning we just come back in and start writing code. We are already behind schedule since he does many meetings so we have put off several meetings already in lieu of completeing more code (bad idea
We were going to have an entire review and more in depth planning of our next set of components however that just has not happend its been abbreivated to sit down, sketh out the notes we talk about them for like 30 minutes and then I go hack some more... we had a week scheduled for planning.
I cant forcibly make code reviews happen and there is no really strong CS backgrounded people here to help... Someone please give some advice on how to rescue this project before it falls into the depths of unmaintainablility and I am a disgruntled hacker.. I have strong influence right now its just me and one other developer...
Jeremy
Re:There are no 9-to5ers (Score:2)
(duck)
--
9 to 5 in the coding stage is great! (Score:3)
However, in the coding stage, I find that immediately dropping everything and leaving at five works great, as long as things are rolling along when you leave. The best time to quit is when you're getting lots done and you know exactly what you're going to do next. Tomorrow morning, you'll know exactly what you've got to start with, and once you do that, you're in the flow again.
If you just keep coding untill you can't get any further, you'll come in the next day, tired out and wondering where to begin. You'll spend hours just getting rolling again.
That's been my personal experience, anyway. I've done some pretty neat stuff on 40-hour coding sprees, but usually the project died there. Sure, I'd get a week's work done in a day, maybe more, but somehow I'd never seem to get anywhere else with the hack-attack code. Eventually, I'd end up rewriting the project from scratch.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
You're thinking SAS Institute (Score:2)
Re:this article is painfully bad (Score:2)
Is this CMM? (Score:2)
Watt Humphrey of Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute [cmu.edu] pushes the Capability Maturity Model [cmu.edu], which he claims marries Total Quality Management (made famous by the Japanese) with software engineering. It's sounds a bit like Scientology to me, with PSP/TSP, reviews, and lot of acronyms, but I have seen rave reviews [accu.org] around the web.
Could some please let me know if the CMM and the "Best Practices" being discussed have anything to do with each other?
Thanks.
Moderators: this isn't intended to be offtopic - I am trying to get at what "best practices" are driving the discussion
Re:notes from my cathedral (Score:2)
No you wouldn't. Without the detailed upfront stuff, test suites, full specs, etc. you'd be adding an extra day of coding, two days of integration, and four of testing for every upfront day you saved. If you were lucky, that is.
Been there, done that. In almost thirty years in this business the fastest projects I've ever been involved with were always the ones with the most religious observance of Best Practices. The latest and more over-budget ones were the ones that cut corners, and the time & money sinks were always in the "Gosh, maybe we should have paid more attention to that up front" category.
Re:this article is painfully bad (Score:2)
I get so sick of this assumption that just because you code under certain OSes to make a living, you must be some sort of bad person.
Sorry, but an OS is a tool, and while we can all certainly bitch about the tools we have to work with, does it really make sense to take a lower salary to work at a place with better tools? I mean, what would we say about a construction guy who refuses to work at a site because the hammers suck?
Personally, I think the worst thing you can do is only ever use one OS. That makes you a one dimensional coder. A good coder is someone who can make quality software in any environment. And your never going to get there unless you've had some experience with crappy environemnts.
When I'm at work, I work with one set of tools, chosen by my employers for business reasons. They are not the tools I'd choose, but then, the tools I'd choose won't work for their app and their business model. It is pretty hard to develop Windows GUI software under Linux. When I go home, I develop on a Linux box because that has the tools I enjoy the most. Am I a whore? Should I instead refuse to work with anything but the best, mortgage be damned? That, to me, is a fairly idiotic idea.
OpenSource has helped me out. (Score:2)
I have heard family talking about how they think open source is bad, there arguments are usualy the following "people can see your code and find ways to hack in" but i just mention peer review and then they understand.
sorry about my spelling, i just got the warm fuzzies and needed to speak
Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this is the war room..
notes from my cathedral (Score:5)
I work for probably the most process-heavy, Dilbert-inspired corporate monolith around. We do have an intricate process involving frequent peer reviews of code, documentation, and architecture, combined with gate-keeping by senior designers who determine what is good enough to go into the final product. And y'know what, correct application of the correct process really does make our lives as software engineers easier. Reviews of requirements and architecture up front reduce the amount of re-coding we have to do at coding time, so much so that our time breakdown is something like 40% up-front documentation (including test cases), only 10-20% coding, and we have the rest of the time left to exhaustively test the thing. Sure, things aren't always so rosy for every single project and feature, but overall my impression is that you can get a lot of gain out of your process if you invest in it up front.
Some of the gains aren't evident right away, but full test case suites, requirements, and architecture documents make your results more maintainable. We still have 10 year old code in our product; because it was documented, we know that it still works, and we have tests to prove it. We're not in a situation of "don't change this magic code or the product will never work again".
The most important thing, though, is management support. It's true, we could turn around our product three times as fast without all of the process overhead, and I think sometimes management is tempted to go that way. But without documentation, etc., we wouldn't be able to keep up that pace for 10-15 years on a single product. Our release dates would gradually slip more and more, as the combination of all of our earlier shortcuts came back to hurt us. I see this happening to a lot of PC software companies (I'm in embedded systems) and it's painful to watch.
You really have to have a corporate-wide committment to software quality, up-front design and documentation, and a repeatable process, but if you're really in the software business to stay, I think it's worth it. SW engineering process is the stuff that was both tremendously boring and incredibly obvious in school, but it does work well if you take the time to use it.
Re:Coding in the "real world" (Score:2)
When you post a note to a mailing list or newsgroup that starts with "Hey, I want [insert program name here] to do [insert feature here]" and ends with "Here's a patch that does about a third of what I'm trying to accomplish," that is a design in a real sense. The reason that source code is human readable is that it serves as a means of communication. It documents what the program does, for other developers and for the original author across the gulf of time. Open source projects are often written with an explicit understanding of that.
Re:Blind cheerleading doesn't help anything (Score:2)
>>of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers
>>are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
>
>Bzzzt. The reason those games are coded is because people
>grew up with them, period. No one would play Missile Command
>instead of DOOM otherwise. They deliberately have the same
>graphics and everything. In fact, many of them are copyright
>violations, or would be if the company cared.
No, you are completely wrong here. What I'm saying is that Linux game sites are filled with endless clones of old arcade games, and almost all of those games don't even live up to the originals. You would expect the free availability of Linux to foster the next Sid Meier or Shigeru Miyamoto or Dani Bunten, but it isn't happening. Linux game developers are coders, not designers.
Re:Reminds me of the time I finished a project... (Score:2)
When I think of the years I wasted sitting in classrooms listening to some stuffed shirt drone on about things I already knew, I wish I'd had the courage to drop out at junior high. School is nothing but an attempt at brainwashing to create perfect corporate wage slaves. Any learning is purely coincidental
This I highly disagree with... college is the one chance you have to truly think, to exercise parts of your mind that the corporate does not tolerate. I am in business for myself too, and turned down several corporate jobs that many would have taken... like you, I do miss the people at school, but unlike you I also miss the cerebral part of it. I guess you're right in part, lectures can be boring and unstimulating (and there is ever so much busywork)... I dunno, though, you still get to think about things more abstractly than you do in the real world, and you are surrounded by smart people. I think that's what I miss most, being surrounded by intelligence. The only problem with the real world is that the average person has... average intelligence! :-)
Regardless, I'd recommend that you finish school... I know it may seem like a waste now, but I'd wager you'd be glad you did it down the road... I have some friends now who stopped school mid-way through and are trying to get back into while working full time... that is a hard and long process.
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
Re:Proud to be a 'technology prostitute' (Score:2)
Just how competitive are we talking?
Without even a moment's hesitation?
Well, obviously I'd hesitate long enough to make sure that you were offering the maximum I could get out of you...
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
Damn Straight (Score:3)
You don't get stuff fixed, code is usually an unmaintainable time bomb waiting to go off, and you see constructs that make you wonder if the coders ever went through basic CS. Data storage is rarely thought out and structures resemble rats nests. God help you if you have to deal with C++ code.
In short, the commercial development world is a Mongolian Clusterfuck of immense proportions.
Re:Why of course, they are not mutually exclusive (Score:2)
Re:Amen, Brother. (Score:2)
The article and this comment remind me of how pleasant my current boss' attitude is. As far as he is concerned, code reviews aren't about the formal process. Reviewing code is something programmers do. If you are going to work on it, you have to review it to understand it. As a result, he encourages us to raise issues with possible bugs and ways to improve it. But then, it's nice to be able to say, "My boss writes good code."
Re:Ahhh, Someone help me!!@#! (Score:5)
Some random thoughts:
Wow, that got long. Hopefully some of it was useful.
Re:9 to 5 (Score:5)
I acknowledge many of the problems this guy is talking about, and XP is a promising way of making this work in the real-world of software schedules. Also, some organizations (e.g. Data Connection Ltd, a former employer of mine) have amazing setups. Code review is mandatory - they don't try and tart it up as "objectives" either, it's part of the discipline of working professionally. It confounds me how many paid programmers don't even understand the meaning of the words "professional" and "discipline"!
Incidentally, I don't hold with his notion that a thousand developers adding features willy-nilly is better than a tight team with a coherent design philosophy, but - hey - you can hide all that crap behind a user interface and no-one's any the wiser. Hmm. Didn't Microsoft try something similar?
[The opinions stated in this article are not endorsed in any way by Data Connection Ltd. Just thought I'd make that clear!]
What's really going on? (Score:2)
Commercial=revenue, OSS=great code
You take one road or the other. That's it. As of now there is no middle. Try to tell the average Office Suite user that OSS is better and they'll most likely reply with, "I don't care."
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Re:Ahhh, Someone help me!!@#! (Score:2)
Projects that sacrifice delivery time with proper development, its happening I was hoping to provoke a little discussion and gain some insight into the problem, instead I am modded down. Just GREAT I hate it when people moderate without reading the damn articles.
Re:Open source and pride (Score:2)
One of the things that mitigates its effects in open source is that few projects get started without a working prototype. A lone programmer scratches an itch first, and then goes looking for a pool of users/co-developers to find and fix bugs and extend the concept.
Comments (yeah, catchy subject, eh?) (Score:2)
In the hands of countless developers, what can be done with an Open Source project is unlimited. It simply takes time to add whatever functionality you (or the boss, customer, etc.) wish were there.
Not every free software developer can work on every free software project. I see a lot of postings on
Contrast this bureaucratic model with Open Source. If I want to add a feature to an Open Source project, I simply download the source code and add the feature. (Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea).
This might be true for smaller projects with only a few coders and easy-to-navigate license terms, but it doesn't hold up for projects like Mozilla, StarOffice, or the Linux kernel. Many projects have specific coding rules, accept changes from specific users only, and are simply too damn big to just go in and add one or two features. I'm not saying it's impossible; clearly it's not. Just look at how far Mozilla came in two years (a relatively short time for such a large project, one that had to start over from scratch no less). I just feel it's important to stress to newcomers to the various source access movements that it's more than just downloading the code, rewriting it, and making history. There's publishing it afterwards (depending on the license/project), integrating it with other code, testing it (optional, sadly, in too many cases), and the like. Getting involved in a medium-to-large project can be a serious investment of braintrust, just as it is with sequestered-source projects.
I can definitely agree about the tech-support thing, though. It's what I do for money while I try to go back to school to learn all the things I should have been paying attention to before going out into the real world, and let me tell you: he was lucky to be considered a step above the slugs....
Re:Other downsides of the Cathedral... (Score:2)
That's the whole thing with open source. The code is not written for any nebulous market. It is written for the coder that wrote it. Thus, in the bazaar the code satisfies the target `market' exactly. So what if that market consists of 1 person? If the next person to use the code isn't 100% satisfied, what's preventing the addition of a feature and an option switch?
Sorry, but while what you say is basicly true, it is totally irrelevant.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Re:Reminds me of the time I finished a project... (Score:2)
So what are you doing now? Don't give up your schooling, that's a decision you'll regret later in life...
I hope not from Matt's Software Script Archives (Score:2)
A site I think does a pretty good job of helping Perl newbies learn is Perl Monks [perlmonks.org]. OTOH I like to answer questions there so I am biased.
Cheers,
Ben
This is why Linux will never go mainstream desktop (Score:2)
I've tried to explain my position before (I like Linux, btw). From the article:
Open Source simply replaces one pre-approval process (focus groups) with another, more inclusive, pre-approval process. In order to add a feature to an Open Source product, you must be able to write code.
This is how I interpret the above line: Only features that serious, hardcore programmers deem valuable will ever be written into the software. By definition, things like the Office Paper Clip will never make it. GREAT! I can hear thousands of Linux hackers going crazy. Listen, everytime I sit down at some computer neophytes' desk to show them how to do something in Word/Excel/Outlook, that little dude pops up, I hide him and say "I hate that &*($!," they say "you're kidding. I love it."
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KIS economic solution (Score:2)
"Here, free software! Give me money, and other people will give you free software because they see I got money, so they think you might give them some." It's that simple.
Acting civilized pays off in the long term.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Functionality argument (Score:2)
He argues that a product is more functional if you can do more with it. Clearly the implication of benefit is for the users.
That's all fine and dandy, except that his reason for why OSS wins is that developers can do limitless things with the software! I'm sorry, but users don't give a damn if limitless development/developers could happen to a product. They want to use it now.
He almost touched upon my biggest issue with OSS when he mentioned that development is done to "satisfy a developer's itch." I agree with that, which is where the problem comes from. Feature bloat. Everyone wants to be the guy to add the coolest new gadget/widget/feature. Not too many people like fixing bugs/memory leaks. Likewise, I'd rather write my own code then peer-review your feature (which I never liked anyway).
It's the same old argument:
#1: OSS is better because if there's something wrong you can fix it. Unfortunately the average user can't. He's just as dependant on someone else - only this time they're anonymous.
#2 OSS is better because everyone can examine the code and make sure it's "up to par" in terms of security, efficiency, privacy etc. Unfortunately, you have to people with strange interests to scour those things for free.
He hasn't revealed any insight, except that he was frustrated by not getting his own features into his company's software.
Cry me a river.
Reminds me of the time I finished a project... (Score:2)
He took one look at my documentation, said "This'll never work." and apparently got stuck on that setting. I explained that it was done, and it did work already, but that didn't faze him. Eventually, he got me to throw away all my work and rewrite it so it didn't meet the original spec, ran slower, and used more file space.
The reason? He couldn't understand anything with a data structure more complicated than an array, and didn't believe in using dynamic allocation or pointers. Ever. Seriously.
Hundreds of globals, gotos in every function, 20,000 line undocumented source files, hidden arbitrary limits to data size: all that was okay, but no linked lists or trees. Certainly not something as complex and mysterious as a hash table! Stuff like that causes bugs!
I won't mention where this was, but if you ever wonder why an automated telephone response system is so screwed up and useless, maybe it came out of this shop.
It was then that I realized I could never tolerate the corporate environment, and stopped pursuing the university degree I'd need for such a job.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Re:this article is painfully bad (Score:2)
- Boss: I've got a new project for you. It involves VB and MS-Windows.
There's... not being able to use a language or OS because you don't have enough knowledge... or asking your boss to reconsider because you think they're the wrong tools to use in that situation... but this is entirely different.Employee: No, I won't do it. I'm morally opposed to using VB or MS-Windows.
Boss: Okay......
Re:Ahhh, Someone help me!!@#! (Score:2)
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It's not just coding (Score:2)
This isn't just a coding issue. I run into this in other fields. There is a real tendancy for people (particularly managers) that anything they don't know how to do a) is easy and b) takes very little time. The managers look at you working and think "all they're doing is sitting there typing - that's not very hard" because nothing they do on a computer is very hard.
I used to have managers hit me with extra task after extra task, claiming "It'll just take fifteen minutes", because any task they didn't do themelves must be trivial. I developed a much used mantra "Nothing, ever takes 'just fifteen minutes'".
The shame is, people managing projects rarely understand what they want or what the job entails, only that they've been told to produce a project. And, since their bosses don't have to deal with it, they've been given the same too-short deadline, too-vague instruction problem they're passing on to you.
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
Another interesting fact about this group is that the Capability Maturity Model was built around the processes that this group implemented, and they are the only software organization to hold a CMM of five for a sustained period of time.
However, their supreme reliability comes at the price of a cost-per-line almost double that of your average delivered software project. I guess you could say that their process is overkill for projects that don't require this kind of reliability.
Fixing Someone Else's Broken Code; Resources (Score:4)
This is not to say that my own has always been of the very highest quality, but in fact I decided early on to try to come to a fundamental understanding of what was wrong with software development, to get very good at debugging (I say that debugging is a specialty on my homepage [goingware.com]) and to learn to write better code.
In my early years I was initially very shocked at what I'd discover in production use at companies. Over the years I just learned that that's standard practice, in commercial software, in-house software, and even in scientific software (where I have become convinced, because of my experiences with high-energy physics data analysis, that many scientific papers are published with erroneous measurements because of software bugs).
Early on I read that something like 90% of software development is spent doing maintenance programming. Some of this is doing legitimate upgrading, but a lot of it is just spent fixing bugs, and even a lot of time spent doing upgrades would be more productive if the code were of better quality.
After reading this figure and having so many experiences with software bugs, both other people's and my own, I decided very early on to get very good at debugging.
One of the first things I did was adopt the regular use of "lint" for checking my C code. I would integrate lint targets into my makefiles and after editing a source file I would type "make lint" before compiling to objects and lint would check all the files that were out of date with the object modules. Pretty quickly I got to where I could write code that was nearly always lint-clean - but the existing code I worked on would make lint scream with hundreds if not thousands of complaints, often serious things like variables being used before they are initialized.
One of the first solid clues I got about software quality came from Robert Ward's book "Debugging C" - now out of print, it predated the common use of source code debuggers and talked about how to write your own stack crawls and other tools.
Ward emphasized the use of the Scientific Method in debugging, and because I was trained in physics, this came very naturally to me; before that I'd mostly floundered and used printf a lot.
I've gotten very good at debugging and have even worked full-time as a debugger at Apple Computer [apple.com] where I was a "Debug Meister" and my business card gave my title as "Cybernetic Entomologist".
I can easily get highly paid consulting work doing debugging for companies desperate to ship a product (and have in the past) but I don't really like to do it for various reasons, some of the same reasons I quit my debugging job at Apple.
One is that if I only do debugging I don't have something to point to at the end of the day and say "I wrote that". I could say "that works because of me", but sadly there's usually lots of bugs left that I didn't have the time to find so I don't really feel proud of the result. The other problem is that the bugs are usually not there because of something interesting, it's not like the code is mostly good but there's some subtle flaws, rather the code is a heap of dung and I can go in with a pitchfork and do debugging wholesale until I get tired of it and the client or manager decides the rate new bugs are being found is low enough they can feel OK about shipping it.
I don't feel good about contributing to such shoddiness. If a company is not good enough to support quality in their corporate culture I don't want to come in and put on a band-aid for them. It would be an entirely different thing if a company hired me to restructure their development process so that quality was a goal that was achieved through direct application of process but gee whiz no one has ever asked me to do that for them.
I do have to say though that the best thing that ever happened to me is that I became a "technology prostitute" as the author of the original article puts it. One benefit of this is that the process is entirely of my own creation, and almost all of the work I've been given has been to write entirely new products from scratch, so I can engineer in quality from the beginning.
Here's a few recommendations I have. Get good tools. Besides a compiler, editor and debugger, you need a static code checker and you also need dynamic testers. The ones I know about are (I haven't used them all yet):
- PC-Lint [gimpel.com] static code checking for C and C++. It runs on Windows but Flexe-Lint comes as shrouded source code and is highly portable.
- Spotlight [onyx-tech.com] dynamic tester for Mac PowerPC - I use this every day and recommend it highly
- BoundsChecker [numega.com] dynamic tester for Windows
- Purify [rational.com] dynamic tester for Unix (but apparently not Linux) and Windows NT
- Optimizeit [optimizeit.com] dynamic tester for Java - do you know many Java programs have memory leaks? Can you understand why? Not just Java but any garbage collected program.
There's also memprof and electric fence, which I think run on Linux. It would be possible to modify gcc so that you program when built with debugging flags and linked with a special library would have all memory references boundschecked before allowing the access. This could work with both read and write access and would catch overruns by as little as one byte - Spotlight does this by patching the executable powerpc code and rewriting the debugging symbol table.Finally, to really come to understand the software quality problem in the industry and what you can do about it, read The Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems [ncl.ac.uk] also available on the Usenet News as comp.risks [comp.risks]. The book The Software Conspiracy [softwareconspiracy.com] exposes the complete disregard the commercial software industry has for serving the consumer by providing quality products - I haven't read it yet but it looks interesting.
A very interesting methodology that emphasizes personal responsibility and puts the fun back into programming as well as maintaining quality from the very start is Extreme Programming [c2.com]. I'm starting to adopt extreme programming (the the extent a one man operation can - I can't work in pairs :-/ ) and find it a tremendous benefit.
Uh Oh (Score:4)
Oh no! We're doomed!
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Re:There are no 9-to5ers (Score:2)
Most people are mentally productive and efficient about two hours a day on a regular basis. The rest of the time at work for a white-collar worker consists of doing their core job at less than full competence, completing the mundania necessary to the job, and slacking.
And of those things, the slacking is the most conducive to keeping you mentally rested enough to be able to have those productive hours each day. Working hard at mental work eight hours a day is a recipie for producing eight hours of low-quality mental work each day.
Now, this is also why enjoying your work is valuable. If you truly enjoy your work, you will get some of the benefits of relaxation from the work itself -- in that case you'll probably have no trouble putting in four hours of work per day and will desire to put in those hours anyway.
Anyway, they're not paying you for eight hours of work; that's just the traditional way of accounting the pay. They're paying you for the two hours of productivity, even if they don't understand it.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Blind cheerleading doesn't help anything (Score:2)
Have you ever looked at the gcc source? It's amazing that it hasn't collapsed under its own weight. It's very scary that so many people are reliant on it.
>>While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven
>>themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber,
>there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers.
>
>Sadly, you are right. Also sadly, however, it is the same in commerial shops.
You usually don't find commercial shops run by a bunch of newbie programmers. There are old hands with an eye on things. I find it's pretty typical for new programmers to jump onto a project with all sorts of great ideas...ideas that show they don't really understand the architecture, or that show they aren't thinking about reliability. Most open source projects are completely lacking the experience factor.
>And, may I point out, the games you listed are classic games.
>People like them because they grew up with them.
No. People write them because they are unable to think of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
Coding in the "real world" (Score:5)
Re:Missing link? (Score:2)
Maybe he will only publish the third atricle if a certain number of employees of said "major software company" quit.
:-)
Re:Other downsides of the Cathedral... (Score:2)
In the bazaar, design decisions are often made by people who have no idea what the market wants.
Sorry, I'm not trying to be incredibly inflammatory, but my statement seems to be about as true as yours is.
9 to 5 (Score:5)
Re:9 to 5 (Score:4)
Building life-critical software is fundamentally different from making money-critical software. This is because, for life-critical software, people will trade off time-to-market and feature base to get quality (absence of bugs).
Open Source doesn't even provide this. Think about it. If you needed a pacemaker (life-critical), would you want it to run on Linux? I wouldn't. Linux has uptimes of over a year; I need uptimes measured in decades. Frankly, no top 10 OS is qualified for life-critical stuff. I'll trust Linux with my data, even my money, but not with my pulse, my shuttle, or my airliner avionics.
When you build life-critical software, you do it anal-retentively, line-by-line, and work at a snail's pace. The result is something that does one thing (or a few things) very well under incredible circumstances.
Try working that way in the commercial world of money-critical software, and you will be beat to market every time. And not by a little. I bet that it would take decades to build a word processor to compete with today's stuff, if it had to have life-critical reliability.
The code is different, the process is different, the people are different.
Other downsides of the Cathedral... (Score:5)
Thus you end with administrative request about a near impossible feature to be implemented in an astoundingly short delay withouth enough resources. That added with the fact that a lot of programmers in the Cathedral are only waiting 5pm to go back home (and hack in code they really like??) forces people to cut around the corners and take shortcuts. After all the holy priests of the cathedrals do not care if the program is working fine... all that matters is if the feature is implemented and if the software has enough eye-candy to impress other priests in other cathedrals who will pay for our stuff.
Of course it might not be that way in all cathedrals... but the more I move from catehdral to cathedral the more I become atheist
Re:hrm (Score:2)
If the business types are competent, they don't have to know a thing about how to make software. They do need to know what features will sell, and how well. That is, they need to grok the customer. That's their job.
If the techies are competent, they don't have to know a thing about the customer. They have to understand what the business types are telling them to build, and to build it to their satisfaction.
You don't want techies telling the business people what features need to go in (unless the software is to be consumed by techies, perhaps), and you don't want business people telling techies how to put the features in. Once that happens, people are stepping on each others' toes.
Sure, the spec is going to change. The business reality is going to change. What's going to happen in three months in this biz? I don't know, and I'm a Slashdotter! There are several ways to handle this, and every good software engineering methodology, from extreme programming to Rational Unified Process, takes that into account.
Now for the dirty little secret. If you have competent businesspeople and competent techies, this will work. If you have incompetent businesspeople, or incompetent techies, the product will be a hard sell. The nasty part is, unlike a McDonald's, no amount of process or other idiotproofing measures can change this. I've seen process go out of hand to try to reign in incompetent businesspeople and incompetent techies: it just doesn't work. Any process heavy enough to keep an incompetent from doing damage (to say nothing about making progress) is so heavy that the competent people must ignore it in order to get anywhere.
There are exactly two ways to handle incompetent businesspeople and techies on a software project: training and severence pay.
Re:What's really going on? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the company often doesn't realize that keeping it clean helps you work faster, and that gets the product out the door faster. Getting the product out the door faster is something they can understand. Clean code, to people who read code as line noise, sounds like some esoteric virtue, so they don't care about it.
The solution is often to make the code clean as your personal version of "I'm working as fast as I can". I've fallen into the trap of trying to speed up by sacrificing cleanliness. Unless you are doing a sprint measurable in hours, this doesn't work; you end up sloshing through mud.
The analogy I've heard comes from house painting. Ask a company to come in and paint a room, and the first thing they do is come in with drop cloths, blue tape, and do a lot of things that are not painting. This is patently unneccesary; if they are careful, they won't get paint where it's not wanted. but once they do all this prep work (the equivalent of cleaning code), they can paint fast-fast-fast. The prep work actually saves time.
Similarly, cleaning code saves time, usually immediately. It makes you faster at coding, reduces the debug cycles, reduces the amount of time you have to listen to QA/management/customers rant on about bugs.
Economics missing (Score:3)
His discussion of peer approval being crucial reinforces ESRs insight [tuxedo.org] that a "gift economy" lies at the heart of Open Source culture, but the author gives no hint of how his (or anyone elses) open source coding would be compatible with long term economic self-interest
ESR does so in the Magic Cauldron [tuxedo.org]
Re:Functionality argument (Score:2)
Sure, they can't fix things when they break. But they can hire somebody.
If I am a dot-com, I have a commercial web server, and it crashes under certain circumstances, I can only work with the vendor. If they want to fix it and can, I'm in luck; otherwise, I'm hosed. If I have an OSS web server, and it crashes under certain circumstances, I can hire people to fix it. I probably won't actually put them on my payroll; I'll just look for a contract.
The fact that developers have so much freedom with an OSS product directly implies that users with money can get said developers to push the software in their preferred direction. In the commercial market, the customer is stuck with the prayer method of software support.
Re:Missing link? (Score:2)
Re:Code reviews -- formatted (Score:2)
If enough developers can get over themselves, and admit that they make mistakes once in a while, we might get a little further...
Cathedral has one good thing going for it: Focus (Score:5)
Now I know that people will want to jump in and say "But look at all the bugs! Look at the poor quality! 2.4 will be released as better software because of the delay!" but the fact remains that the Cathedral gets products out the door while most OSSers live in the near future. "Just wait till the next version," we say, "when it will have [X] feature."
To a large degree, when we buy a piece of software, like Word 2.0, we don't just buy Word 2.0. We also buy into the idea that we bought a piece of software that works decently now, and the creator is committed to eventually upgrading the software until it's the word processor to end all word processors. And so we're at Word 9 today, and the cycle continues. When software is looked at this way, getting a product out the door becomes more important than waiting for people to finish it in their free time. That's why Cathedrals (read: corporations) will make money and that's why they'll stay in business.
I'll add two caveats to the above:
1: This doesn't necessarily apply to security products. Thank God Microsoft didn't introduce us to sockets.
2: Another reason why the Cathedral will always exist is because of competition. If you have highly sensitive secrets it doesn't make sense to publish your source. Security through obscurity might not be a good thing, but that doesn't mean I go around giving everyone copies of my door key and daring them to find out where I live.
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Good Experience working for big company (Score:2)
I work for a big company that works for the government.
We are a contracting firm, so just because things are good where I work doesn't mean they aren't bad somewhere else or glorious in a third place in the same company.
I find the processes we have to be pretty thorough and not too excessive.
The funny thing is that people always complain about 'government inefficiency.' My contract, like many government contractors, gets an 'award fee,' which is the only money we get over cost. If we drop code into operations, and there's some big bug, guess what happens? The company loses money. So, there's a huge investment in documentation and code quality, because that's how we actually make our profit (well, and hardware support quality, etc., but who cares about that? ;) )
One enormously bad thing : since we work for the government, we essentially have 275 million 'managers.' The president made an executive order at one point that means I have to do this one particularly annoying thing everytime I do documentation that cannot be done automatically with current technology. Stupid politicians.
Also, for what's it's worth, even though I don't think it's *that* good, we were rated on one of those job sites/magazines in the top 20 places to work in america.
Re:There are no 9-to5ers (Score:3)
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
According to the show, they have some rather nice policies:
- 9-5; no late-night coding sessions. The Pres. believes tired coders write bad code, and spend even more time fixing their bugs the next day
- On-site physician, so employees can get to a doctor more easily, keeping them happy, and increasing productivity
- full-time landscaping staff. The company is located on a few 10s of acres that are maintained year round.
- half the management is women; many married with children. Meeting times are generally flexible, to accomodate those who need to leave at odd times to pick up kids from school, go to a little league game, etc.
- I think they have on-site daycare
- Generally open, comfortable, attractive workspaces for employees.
The pres. also said something like, 'We spend and extra $5 million a year to keep our employees very happy, and save $15 million by increased productivity, and low-turnover."
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http://movies.shoutingman.com
Managers have their place... somewhere... (Score:2)
Anywhere in the real world, a certain level of BS is
Generally, programers think along those lines. Very few people are able to talk to clients and pull something reasonable from them. That's where the managers belong - an interface layer, if you will.
iD didn't have customers, per say. They were making something that they thought was cool, and it just so happened that a lot of other people thought it was cool and bought it. In most of the rest of the buisness world, it's not like that. You do what the customer wants you to do, not just something that you like.
Now, if we're talking about something as small as iD, even in a more "professional" situation, what you propose will work. But this is also a world of giant corporations (IBM, for instance) that simply cannot operate without a large governing body of managment.
Some companies will have far too many managers and too many BS rules, sure. That can't really be stopped.
BTW, read the "Tao of Programming". It's, shall I say, enlightening. I beleive one section specifically addresses what you raised.
Re:Good Experience working for big company (Score:2)
I don't complain (about the management) much.
Re:9 to 5 (Score:2)
According to the Space Shuttle software article on Slashdot few months back, the team working on this and their environment are nothing like anywhere else in the world. The programmers do not have any freedom. NONE. They cannot work after 5, it's not allowed. They cannot add a useful feature. Not allowed. They program with a manager looking over their shoulder the entire 8 hours.
However, I agree wholeheartedly with the paragraph that Brian wrote that upset you. I have seen programmers come and go for many years. And the ones who "swim" become nothing short of gods while the ones who leave at 5:00 end up quiting never to be heard from again.
Personally, I would hate working in an environment like this "IBM group". I love to innovate. I live for implementing ideas, no matter how late into the night it takes me. And as for myself not having a life, balony.
Ozwald
Re:9 to 5 (Score:4)
Programmers working from 9 to 5 each day? I have no problems with that...
Programmers who cannot wait 5 to run away from the code they're working on? Now there's a problem... Those need to realize that they're are lots of other jobs with projects they might like more out there.
Of course everything up there was IMHO
Re:9 to 5 (Score:3)
Amen, Brother. (Score:2)
I'm returning to school after working at a large company.... I just finished introducing my replacement to the code I've spent the last few months writing/refining. I've never seen so many mistakes in my life - and it was my code!
The idea that large corps don't review their code explains why their click-wrap licenses claim they can't be held accountable for thebugs.