Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Working Environment For a Developer?

New submitter Dorgendubal writes: I work for a company with more than a thousand developers and I'm participating in activities aimed at improving the work experience of developers. Our developers receive an ultrabook that is rather powerful but not really adapted for development (no admin rights, small storage capacity, restrictive security rules, etc.). They also have access to VDIs (more flexibility) but often complain of performance issues during certain hours of the day. Overall, developers want to have maximum autonomy, free choice of their tools (OS, IDE, etc.) and access to internal development environments (PaaS, GIT repositories, continuous delivery tools, etc.) . We recently had a presentation of VMWare on desktop and application virtualization (Workstation & Horizon), which is supposedly the future of the desktops. It sounds interesting on paper but I remain skeptical.

What is the best working environment for a developer, offering flexibility, performance and some level of free choice, without compromising security, compliance, licensing (etc.) requirements? I would like you to share your experiences on BYOD, desktop virtualization, etc. and the level of satisfaction of the developers.

Comments

Sounds like they already answered this

[OhPlz]

If they want to pick their own tools, let them. I don't understand this fear of giving developers admin access to their machines. What do you think is going to happen if they get this supremely powerful level of access? If some are happy with VMs, let them use VMs. If some want to install, configure, and update their tools manually, let them. If it becomes a problem for a specific developer, steer them towards a VM instead. If you can't trust developers to maintain their system then you probably shouldn't be trusting them to write your company's code either.

It seems like our uber powerful dev machines are turning into expensive terminals and the ESX cloud is our new time sharing mainframe. Everything old is new again.

No admin privileges!!?

[rayd75]

Are you freakin' kidding me? How is a developer supposed to develop software that "requires administrator privileges" if he or she can't write to arbitrary directories and / or registry keys during normal, post-installation use? While you're at it, you might as well require your developers to use a 1080p screen, thus restricting their interfaces to actually rendering correctly on the displays of 99% of their users! What's next? Requiring the end product to run in an amount of memory likely to be supported on a single-socket motherboard and asking that code manipulating a database not be executed on the database server itself!!? Wow, just wow.

Re:Private Offices

[quantaman]

Start with that. The best hardware on the planet is useless if you can't think due to noise and interruptions.

Or at least high cubicle walls. A developer's most valuable resource is their attention, and other humans are extremely good at demanding one's attention. Even the reflection of someone walking by behind me is enough to cause a momentary distraction and a dip in productivity. It's no mistake I do my best work when I'm the only one around, to optimize productivity give people the ability to cut off distractions.

Exactly that

[Weaselmancer]

I'm out of mod points or I'd mod you up.

My two cents - we have an open office plan where I work. So I like to stay after hours and work. Why? Because the lights are off, I don't have to listen to people milling around me all the time having conversations about the weather or last Sunday's game. Just me and the work I have to do. No distractions. It's blissful.

I can get more done in 2 hours like that than the previous 8.

Re:Exactly that

[jandersen]

Very valid points, of course; the whole idea of open plan is stupid in so many ways; just to take a thing like indoor climate: small offices for 1 or 2 people can have individual heating and aircon, so the ones that like it hot can have that without hearing complaints from those that prefer it cold. You might even have a windows that could open a little bit.

But just as important as the physical environment is the freedom to choose your tools. Developers are skilled workers - I hesitate to use the word 'engineer', I think it is overused and easily misconstrued; an engineer can be anything from the guy that used to shovel coal on a steam locomotive, to a highly academic civil engineer. We skilled workers know best which tools are suitable for our needs. Some people like to use highly complex IDEs with suspicious colour schemes (which remind me of my misspent youth in Soho's nightlife), others actually prefer vi and make scripts in xterm - both setups can be equally productive. Managers prove again and again that they have no clue about what is important for skilled workers; they seem to think we are sort of like sales people, but not as clever, and since sales people fall for glittery kitsch and think the word 'leader' means 'alpha male', that is what they try to serve up to us as well; hence Dilbert.

Rant's over - I have real work to do.

Re:Private Offices

[Tukz]

"bouncing ideas"

This infuriates me more than it probably should.
I have a co-worker who constantly feels the need to bounce ideas off me while I am usually busy and very focused on something.

We've recently started a slackboard for just this exact issue. Post your shit there instead of interrupting everyone because you need to think out loud.