It's called software engineering. Most software is hacked, code-and-fix, cobbled together, unmaintainable dreck. Why? Because managers, clients, and customers blanch when presented with honest, realistic estimates based on metrics. So they'll often search out low-cost developers, eager (perhaps desperate) for work and who will agree to anything. They're probably minimally trained so they're not going to apply good practices (step-wise refinement, descriptive variable naming, OOA/D or SA/SD). They'll furiously churn out spaghetti-and-sausage-ware (not as tasty) that will miss the deadline anyway, barely work, but it'll be something. They invariably burn out and end up leaving and the next developer unlucky enough to be tasked with maintaining and extending the code will be blamed for taking too long for making changes because he or she will have to read, deconstruct, reverse engineer, and comprehend 100% more of the code than they would have had to otherwise.
As Fred Brooks said, there's no silver bullet. But all is not lost. Static analysis tools, code complexity tools can sometimes--I repeat sometimes--help target the 20% of the code that actually needs 80% of the maintenance effort. However, mention McCabe to most programmers and you'll most likely get a blank stare back.
Lengthy functions that compile without a whimper? Talented, good programmers don't write lengthy functions. Instantly vsualize with extreme detail? I've seen that type. Someone usually ends up rewriting their spaghetti and sausage code. This article is shallow nonsense.
You've missed the point. It's a social critique, and an excellent one at that. For most techies, particularly those of the young, white, male nerd variety, tech is one big circle jerk. There are exceptions of course, but it has pretty much been this way since the birth of the PC era.
Many of these have been expressed in other postings, but here's my way of keeping fit. (I'm a 30-year veteran of software development.)
1. Bike to work year round. It's amazing how good technical apparel will keep you dry and warm in extreme weather.
2. Get a standing desk. If your boss won't spring for one, buy a $7 Lack table at Ikea and put it on your desk.
3. Go freelance. Lag time between gigs will give you more time to exercise or do jobs that aren't sedentary, like teaching, construction, etc.
4. Start your own business where you can set your own time.
5. Life your life in 3D. Banish televsion and video games. Minimize the screens in your life.
6. Park at the farthest part of the parking lot.
7. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
8. Dispense with the nerd stereotype workstyle.
9. Walk around the building at lunch.
10. Take active vacations: skiing, hiking, etc. If you go to a beach, swim. Really swim.
Bonus tips:
11. Become vegan. If that's too hard, vegetarian. If that's too hard, flexitarian.
12. Running is probably the most time-efficient exercise there is. The most fitness bang for your time buck. And it's inexpensive if you run outdoors.
I have a Nokia N8. It is a brilliant smartphone: perfect form factor, great camera, the best GPS/Map/routing software by far, plenty of apps, and a built-in FM radio to boot. Stylish too! The downside? It looks like the most recent version of Symbian ^3, Belle, drains the battery in less than a day, even with less than average use (say one call a day, minimal data usage). Very sadly, it has become unusable. At first I thought the battery was just old, so I bought a replacement. It drains the new one too. I don't think it's a specific app, because I reset the phone, removed the old apps, yada, yada. Going back to an old OS version seems unfeasible. I haven't been able to get or find a solution to this yet, from either Nokia support or scouring the web. Too bad, because the N8 is truly marvelous.
Working but fragile code delivered today is more valuable than working and maintainable code delivered tomorrow. This is true even though we all know that maintainable code costs less in the long run--that's what the software engineering books say, and they make a solid case. It's true because if the sales don't start coming in as soon as possible there may not be a long run for maintenance. It's hard for me to day this and hopefully without being too discouraging, but the extra time it takes to write maintainable code (not gold-plated code) is, all too often, not rewarded.
I say that as a programmer/software engineer/developer/what-have-you for thirty years. I've seen some aggressively stupid code in production. Once, I had to debug a particular function that was ginormous. Thirty-three printed pages long. Hundreds-upon-hundreds of lines of C++. One big honking loop. Written by my manager, who got promoted because he wrote it, it worked (mostly, amazingly), and it was on-time (or close). Apparently, he missed the lecture on stepwise refinement and functional decomposition. When a bug was found, of course, I had to struggle through to find the error. The time it took to understand the code was not appreciated. (Refactoring? Bah, Humbug!) There's the conundrum for a lot of developers. The person who wrote the cruft is rewarded and maintenance can end up being a thankless job.
Please don't get me wrong. I've revisited code I'd written in the heat of deadline pressure and found it less than concise too. I'm definitely not holier than thou or anyone else. Although I pretty much try to limit my functions to much less than the length of a single printed page (60 lines).
It's unfortunate that the writer of the original article compares code in the field (the "wild" as the author says) to text book code. This is not a good comparison. Text book code is not good production code almost by definition, mostly because it never contains sufficient error checking and handling. If it did, it would obscure the logic. This doesn't invalidate the gist of his argument though, because, from my experience too, code in the wild is generally pretty hairy.
Possible solutions? Of course, to borrow a phrase from Fred Books, there's no silver bullet. I do believe we can gradually and incrementally improve the overall maintainability of the national code base. I can envision two potential solutions (at this moment): 1) Tapping legendary 10x developers and 2) High-quality, low-cost (open-source?) static analysis tools integrated into IDEs.
1) The apocryphal 10-times programmer. I say apocryphal, because I have yet to see any one of these programmers identified by name in the literature. Purportedly, the 10-times programmer delivers high-quality code on time--the first time. Great, more power to them, but supposedly they're only about 10% of the programming workforce. Can't we find a way to get these mythical creatures to share some of their secret powers with the rest of us journeymen? Maybe they're just born coding machines. Either way, I suppose we'd have to identify them first.
2) A good, configurable static analysis tool, built into the IDE that runs automatically as you type or at build-time or check-in. Not just lint, but one that can assess conformity to generally (or locally) recognized (published) best practices.
Let's hope and strive for the best. Happy holidays.
Employee ownership is, or at least should be, the next evolutionary step for the Yin and Yang of management and unions. Check out the writings of Gar Alparovitz or the Mondragon movement in Spain. Employee ownership is getting a lot of active discussion in the UK today. Companies like W.L.Gore and Valve are leading the way. Here in Chicago, we've had half-hearted and failed attempts by some big companies like United Airlines and the Tribune Co. Those should serve as counter-examples of how not to do it.
But the part of your post that's not true is that Chomsky's elucidation of U.S. interventionism can only be called a "counter-narrative" because the official narrative was a lie.
Noam Chomsky simply rocks. My first encounter with Chomsky was in the late 80's in the pages of Maximum Rock and Roll. Then there were the supernumerary references in my cognitive science text book. Could it be the same guy? Is it possible that there are two different guys named Noam Chomsky? One, the fervent declaimer of American political interventionism and the other a pioneering linguist? Then again in my discrete math text book, on context-free grammars. Then I learned, yes it's the same Noam Chomsky. Here's the deal on Chomsky. Linguist or activist, Occupy or E-Mail, he's a truth teller. Plain and simple.
I'm surprised to see no mention of Prevx (http://free.prevx.com/) in the responses to this query. They release their beta for free and it got rid of a pretty nasty virus on my machine, one that the Computer Associates anti-virus software that comes free from my inet provider largely missed. I'd be curious to know what other people have to say about this particular antivirus package.
I've been a programmer/software engineer/project lead for nineteen years. I'm 42 years old. I've worked for some prominent telecom, publishing, and video game companies. I quit my last job and am not sure I want to get back into it. Why? Do I no longer like software development? No, I still love creating software. I even think it's more important now than ever. The problem, at least as I see it, is that we developers don't have sufficient power. Sure, we're generally paid well, and if your not in a Dilbert like IT shop, you're probably be exposed to a a challenging and interesting variety of problem domains. So what do I mean by insufficient power? Well ageism does exist, in nefarious ways, both subtle and overt. Academic research conducted so far has been inconclusive (and inadequate, IMHO) so the journals don't and can't jump on this issue with any great zeal. We as workers can't really muster any effort to combat ageism. (Just try mentioning "union" among a bunch of libertarian/republican programmers.)
Another area where we lack power: we have no control of our time! We're asked to work outrageous hours on a quarterly basis. It's our industry's not-so-secret scandal. Since a significant percentage of software projects are late, everybody has to work overtime two weeks before a deadline in the hopes of making it, and inevitably, everybody has to work overtime two weeks afterward (or much longer) because the deadline was missed. Usually this is due to bad software engineering (planning, sizing, estimation) early in the project. Why? Because deadlines are negotiated, not judiciously determined. Even then, most software managers are incapable of doing that because they aren't software engineers! I have an M.S. in Software Engineering, and I reported to a former news caster!
So after my sabbatical, am I going to get back into software development? Hard to say right now. With the tech economy as bad as it is, it's not as easy, for anybody, to get back in. For me that's okay. I've got some money saved, I'm going to compete in my first triathlon, and try my hand at the art (painting/writing/video production) that I've always wanted to do, but didn't because of my knack at computers.
So until we developers take the power we already have and focus it into bettering our condition, I'm going to develop and use all of my talents and have some fun in the bright sun.
Obviously, technology is enabling everyone, and significantly corporation, to communicate and do business on a world-wide scale. I believe this is generally good, despite whatever heartaches and hardships crusty fundamentalists must endure. That however, even in full sober view of 9/11, is not the ultimate longest lasting problem. The most impactful problem will be that of unchecked corporate power. Corporations are not democratic, yet in the global economy, their resources and influence dwarf those of many duly elected national governments. Let's start to disassemble the ruse of corporate entitiy rights so that the entire world can live democratically, or at least give people, locally, a choice as to how they want to live. Ultimately, human rights trump property rights.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called software engineering. Most software is hacked, code-and-fix, cobbled together, unmaintainable dreck. Why? Because managers, clients, and customers blanch when presented with honest, realistic estimates based on metrics. So they'll often search out low-cost developers, eager (perhaps desperate) for work and who will agree to anything. They're probably minimally trained so they're not going to apply good practices (step-wise refinement, descriptive variable naming, OOA/D or SA/SD). They'll furiously churn out spaghetti-and-sausage-ware (not as tasty) that will miss the deadline anyway, barely work, but it'll be something. They invariably burn out and end up leaving and the next developer unlucky enough to be tasked with maintaining and extending the code will be blamed for taking too long for making changes because he or she will have to read, deconstruct, reverse engineer, and comprehend 100% more of the code than they would have had to otherwise.
As Fred Brooks said, there's no silver bullet. But all is not lost. Static analysis tools, code complexity tools can sometimes--I repeat sometimes--help target the 20% of the code that actually needs 80% of the maintenance effort. However, mention McCabe to most programmers and you'll most likely get a blank stare back.
Lengthy functions that compile without a whimper? Talented, good programmers don't write lengthy functions. Instantly vsualize with extreme detail? I've seen that type. Someone usually ends up rewriting their spaghetti and sausage code. This article is shallow nonsense.
You've missed the point. It's a social critique, and an excellent one at that. For most techies, particularly those of the young, white, male nerd variety, tech is one big circle jerk. There are exceptions of course, but it has pretty much been this way since the birth of the PC era.
Many of these have been expressed in other postings, but here's my way of keeping fit. (I'm a 30-year veteran of software development.)
1. Bike to work year round. It's amazing how good technical apparel will keep you dry and warm in extreme weather.
2. Get a standing desk. If your boss won't spring for one, buy a $7 Lack table at Ikea and put it on your desk.
3. Go freelance. Lag time between gigs will give you more time to exercise or do jobs that aren't sedentary, like teaching, construction, etc.
4. Start your own business where you can set your own time.
5. Life your life in 3D. Banish televsion and video games. Minimize the screens in your life.
6. Park at the farthest part of the parking lot.
7. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
8. Dispense with the nerd stereotype workstyle.
9. Walk around the building at lunch.
10. Take active vacations: skiing, hiking, etc. If you go to a beach, swim. Really swim.
Bonus tips:
11. Become vegan. If that's too hard, vegetarian. If that's too hard, flexitarian.
12. Running is probably the most time-efficient exercise there is. The most fitness bang for your time buck. And it's inexpensive if you run outdoors.
I have a Nokia N8. It is a brilliant smartphone: perfect form factor, great camera, the best GPS/Map/routing software by far, plenty of apps, and a built-in FM radio to boot. Stylish too! The downside? It looks like the most recent version of Symbian ^3, Belle, drains the battery in less than a day, even with less than average use (say one call a day, minimal data usage). Very sadly, it has become unusable. At first I thought the battery was just old, so I bought a replacement. It drains the new one too. I don't think it's a specific app, because I reset the phone, removed the old apps, yada, yada. Going back to an old OS version seems unfeasible. I haven't been able to get or find a solution to this yet, from either Nokia support or scouring the web. Too bad, because the N8 is truly marvelous.
HTML! Argh! Now I know.
BTW, my comment was divided into paragraphs by line breaks, but they got stripped out! Sorry.
Working but fragile code delivered today is more valuable than working and maintainable code delivered tomorrow. This is true even though we all know that maintainable code costs less in the long run--that's what the software engineering books say, and they make a solid case. It's true because if the sales don't start coming in as soon as possible there may not be a long run for maintenance. It's hard for me to day this and hopefully without being too discouraging, but the extra time it takes to write maintainable code (not gold-plated code) is, all too often, not rewarded. I say that as a programmer/software engineer/developer/what-have-you for thirty years. I've seen some aggressively stupid code in production. Once, I had to debug a particular function that was ginormous. Thirty-three printed pages long. Hundreds-upon-hundreds of lines of C++. One big honking loop. Written by my manager, who got promoted because he wrote it, it worked (mostly, amazingly), and it was on-time (or close). Apparently, he missed the lecture on stepwise refinement and functional decomposition. When a bug was found, of course, I had to struggle through to find the error. The time it took to understand the code was not appreciated. (Refactoring? Bah, Humbug!) There's the conundrum for a lot of developers. The person who wrote the cruft is rewarded and maintenance can end up being a thankless job. Please don't get me wrong. I've revisited code I'd written in the heat of deadline pressure and found it less than concise too. I'm definitely not holier than thou or anyone else. Although I pretty much try to limit my functions to much less than the length of a single printed page (60 lines). It's unfortunate that the writer of the original article compares code in the field (the "wild" as the author says) to text book code. This is not a good comparison. Text book code is not good production code almost by definition, mostly because it never contains sufficient error checking and handling. If it did, it would obscure the logic. This doesn't invalidate the gist of his argument though, because, from my experience too, code in the wild is generally pretty hairy. Possible solutions? Of course, to borrow a phrase from Fred Books, there's no silver bullet. I do believe we can gradually and incrementally improve the overall maintainability of the national code base. I can envision two potential solutions (at this moment): 1) Tapping legendary 10x developers and 2) High-quality, low-cost (open-source?) static analysis tools integrated into IDEs. 1) The apocryphal 10-times programmer. I say apocryphal, because I have yet to see any one of these programmers identified by name in the literature. Purportedly, the 10-times programmer delivers high-quality code on time--the first time. Great, more power to them, but supposedly they're only about 10% of the programming workforce. Can't we find a way to get these mythical creatures to share some of their secret powers with the rest of us journeymen? Maybe they're just born coding machines. Either way, I suppose we'd have to identify them first. 2) A good, configurable static analysis tool, built into the IDE that runs automatically as you type or at build-time or check-in. Not just lint, but one that can assess conformity to generally (or locally) recognized (published) best practices. Let's hope and strive for the best. Happy holidays.
Season's Bleedings courtesy of the NRA.
Employee ownership is, or at least should be, the next evolutionary step for the Yin and Yang of management and unions. Check out the writings of Gar Alparovitz or the Mondragon movement in Spain. Employee ownership is getting a lot of active discussion in the UK today. Companies like W.L.Gore and Valve are leading the way. Here in Chicago, we've had half-hearted and failed attempts by some big companies like United Airlines and the Tribune Co. Those should serve as counter-examples of how not to do it.
But the part of your post that's not true is that Chomsky's elucidation of U.S. interventionism can only be called a "counter-narrative" because the official narrative was a lie.
Very true. Isaac Newton got seriously into Alchemy in his later years.
Noam Chomsky simply rocks. My first encounter with Chomsky was in the late 80's in the pages of Maximum Rock and Roll. Then there were the supernumerary references in my cognitive science text book. Could it be the same guy? Is it possible that there are two different guys named Noam Chomsky? One, the fervent declaimer of American political interventionism and the other a pioneering linguist? Then again in my discrete math text book, on context-free grammars. Then I learned, yes it's the same Noam Chomsky. Here's the deal on Chomsky. Linguist or activist, Occupy or E-Mail, he's a truth teller. Plain and simple.
I'm surprised to see no mention of Prevx (http://free.prevx.com/) in the responses to this query. They release their beta for free and it got rid of a pretty nasty virus on my machine, one that the Computer Associates anti-virus software that comes free from my inet provider largely missed. I'd be curious to know what other people have to say about this particular antivirus package.
I've been a programmer/software engineer/project lead for nineteen years. I'm 42 years old. I've worked for some prominent telecom, publishing, and video game companies. I quit my last job and am not sure I want to get back into it. Why? Do I no longer like software development? No, I still love creating software. I even think it's more important now than ever. The problem, at least as I see it, is that we developers don't have sufficient power. Sure, we're generally paid well, and if your not in a Dilbert like IT shop, you're probably be exposed to a a challenging and interesting variety of problem domains. So what do I mean by insufficient power? Well ageism does exist, in nefarious ways, both subtle and overt. Academic research conducted so far has been inconclusive (and inadequate, IMHO) so the journals don't and can't jump on this issue with any great zeal. We as workers can't really muster any effort to combat ageism. (Just try mentioning "union" among a bunch of libertarian/republican programmers.)
Another area where we lack power: we have no control of our time! We're asked to work outrageous hours on a quarterly basis. It's our industry's not-so-secret scandal. Since a significant percentage of software projects are late, everybody has to work overtime two weeks before a deadline in the hopes of making it, and inevitably, everybody has to work overtime two weeks afterward (or much longer) because the deadline was missed. Usually this is due to bad software engineering (planning, sizing, estimation) early in the project. Why? Because deadlines are negotiated, not judiciously determined. Even then, most software managers are incapable of doing that because they aren't software engineers! I have an M.S. in Software Engineering, and I reported to a former news caster!
So after my sabbatical, am I going to get back into software development? Hard to say right now. With the tech economy as bad as it is, it's not as easy, for anybody, to get back in. For me that's okay. I've got some money saved, I'm going to compete in my first triathlon, and try my hand at the art (painting/writing/video production) that I've always wanted to do, but didn't because of my knack at computers.
So until we developers take the power we already have and focus it into bettering our condition, I'm going to develop and use all of my talents and have some fun in the bright sun.
Obviously, technology is enabling everyone, and significantly corporation, to communicate and do business on a world-wide scale. I believe this is generally good, despite whatever heartaches and hardships crusty fundamentalists must endure. That however, even in full sober view of 9/11, is not the ultimate longest lasting problem. The most impactful problem will be that of unchecked corporate power. Corporations are not democratic, yet in the global economy, their resources and influence dwarf those of many duly elected national governments. Let's start to disassemble the ruse of corporate entitiy rights so that the entire world can live democratically, or at least give people, locally, a choice as to how they want to live. Ultimately, human rights trump property rights.