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Motivating Your Co-Developers?

Posted by Cliff on from the bring-out-the-coder's-whip dept.

3flp asks: "We've heard all about those coding projects where 90% of the code is done by one person. Unfortunately, on my current project it's me :-(. It's a comms DSP project with a lot of C & some assembly. My team of 4 will hopefully produce about 20k lines of code. Now comes the problem: we just got to our first small integration stage (we do try to do them early & often), and it turns out the other guys have got nothing. No code. I want to ask Slashdotters, people who have the experience with small software projects, how would you go about it? How to bring other less experienced coders up to your level and beyond? Or at least how to make them suck less, and if they get stuck on something, to just come and bloody ask for help?" This is something almost every developer has had to deal with. For those of you who have experienced this, what did you do about it and how did things turn out?

"Deadlines are super-tight (what else is new)... but all 'my' parts are ready on time, and I enjoy what I'm doing. After about a month of design and two weeks of coding, I've got about 50% of my software features. The others definitely do understand the requirements and the design, because we had plenty of discussions. 'All right, lets get what you've got so far, we'll just try the interfaces, even if your code doesn't do anything much yet.' 'I haven't tried to compile it yet.' Then I looked at the little code they've produced, and it's a disaster (abhorent coding style, serious logical mistakes, etc). Obviously, these guys understand the 'domain' problem (I would think that's the hard part), but suck at coding (which is apparently the really hard part for them).

Hiring new people this late in the project won't work, as anyone who has read 'The Mythical Man Month' knows. On this project, I have a de-facto role of a software team leader. Before, I've always been just a coder, not responsible for others. So okay, I'm doing fine with my part of coding, but that's no use. If others don't catch up quickly, we'll have serious problems delivering on time. I need to stop hacking on 'my' part of code, and help elsewhere. They definitely do understand the requirements and the design, because we had plenty of discussions. 'All right, lets get what you've got so far, we'll just try the interfaces, even if your code doesn't do anything much yet.' 'I haven't tried to compile it yet.' Then I looked at the little code they've produced, and it's a disaster (abhorent coding style, serious logical mistakes, etc). Obviously, these guys understand the 'domain' problem (I would think that's the hard part), but suck at coding (which is apparently the really hard part for them).

Obviously, I need to look into some way of helping or motivating, but without putting them off. I could just take over someone else's module and code it in no time. But if anyone did that to me... well that's out of the question."

9 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. AC's Rule BIOTCHES by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    CLIT Sucks!

  2. Frosty piss biatches! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    THE DMCA SUCKS... HP has always sucked.. that's why we do Dell!

  3. FP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Frozen penis. You can suck it like a lolly pop!

    Remember, moderating AC's only waste mod points

  4. Re:A big stick by groundhog00 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Ever wonder why the Holocost never happened?

  5. Re:Bad programmers don't change. by groundhog00 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Shag a delic

  6. Slashcode.com has disabled AC posting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    After one night of unmoderated trolling, Slashcode.com has been FORCED to turn off AC posting. You must be logged in to post now. Guess what I'm doing after I write this?

    Try to AC post
  7. Re:Its a tough job and a somewhat dangerous one.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Sometimes constant probing helps

    Oh sure, sexually harrass them too!

  8. I hope you edit your code better than your post... by Artifice_Eternity · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A large chunk of it is repeated twice.

    Luckily for you, the Slashdot "editors" applied their excellent language skills to your post and... completely failed to correct the problem.

  9. Slashcode.com has disabled AC posting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The new lameness filter is to ban the anonymous coward. That has to be the best coding they have ever done!

    Still want to run Slashcode?