Institutional Memory and Reverse Smuggling

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 4, 2011 @06:36AM from the you-never-forget-your-first-flunitrazepam dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who's worked in a large engineering firm is familiar with institutional amnesia. Things get built, and then forgotten. Documentation is supposed to help, but rots, is lost, or uses obsolete methods and notation nobody understands anymore. I recently found myself in a strange position, rehired as a consultant with the unofficial job of reminding the company how an old plant works. I even have some personal copies of documents they seem to have lost, which I have to awkwardly smuggle back in. I don't find these kinds of experience written about often, but I'm convinced they're more common than you'd think."

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Re:I see this in code I work on all the time by ninetyninebottles · 2011-12-04 07:54 · Score: 1, Troll

While I understand the point you are making when I hear the term "Extreme Programming" my imagination runs wild.
Yeah and the term for writing computer programs is "coding" and the anode on a battery is labeled "-" those are the dreadfully inappropriate terms that stuck. Deal with it.

Are your[sic] trying to run with the Bulls[sic] in Pamplona while trying to figure where that Division[sic] by zero takes place?
Yes I am, but that is unrelated to the term "extreme programming". Also, you improperly capitalized "Bulls" and "Division"; maybe you've been watching too much basketball?