If only ...
- ... managers were that wise
- ... organizations had documentation standards a contractor could follow
- ... organizations were ... well ... organized enough to store documentation in a sane manner
- ... requirements were clearly documented
- ... requirements didn't do a 180 in the 3 days before production
- ... contracts actually went the length agreed upon (I'm being smacked by this one ...)
- ... a lot of things
It's all well and good to say that, neilwatson. Even if I wanted to provide documentation of the code I'm producing right now, I can't! I never received specs, support, or even time to do it right. I have to lie to my management in order to write tests. In fact, the group that pays my contract isn't even the group I'm writing the code for. And, I don't have a person in the group who's going to own the code to hand over ownership. And, my manager doesn't care! (Well, maybe he cares, but he doesn't see the priority.)
My situation is normal. It's even somewhat expected.
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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6 Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified. | [reply] |
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I cannot force my client to do things "The Right Way"(tm). I can only do the things they pay me to do. I bring up thoughts, in the hopes of educating them. If those thoughts go nowhere, that's not my problem. If their codebase is unmaintainable and unmaintained, they lose money. In this way, market forces will take care of the problem (albeit, very slowly). Companies with well-maintained code will have less bugs and be more responsive to customer needs than those without. Customers will naturally flock to those products that are more stable and for whom adding features is less risky.
In other words, we see that Linux is slowly eroding at Windows's dominance of the personal and office desktops. As Linux becomes more user-friendly (which was Windows's forte), its benefits (stability, security, price, and a better underlying feature-set) will start becoming more relevant. That is the market at work. It takes time, but does do "The Right Thing"(tm).
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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6 Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.
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