Lamentably, one of the facts of life is that poor systems get thrown together on tight budgets with even tighter deadlines. They sometimes work, but have sacrificed maintainability. One project I am working on right now involves copying a hybrid flat file/Access database driven Web site to exclusively use MS SQL Server 7.0. The original project was put together by a novice Perl programmer who's prior programming experience was JavaScript (his subroutines that end in return true work because he fails to use strict, -w, or taint checking).

I have a lot of garbage data in the database because there was no validation of data on either the client or server side and because I cannot change all of the system, I have to modify all subroutines to not only work with the new system I am implementing, but to also be 100% backwards compatible with any scripts that I may not have the opportunity to work on (that was one heck of a long sentence). It's quite a challenge and is terrible coding practice.

Properly, a project manager should have been assigned to redesign the entire system. Unfortunately, while a system redesign is superior to a conversion or upgrade, it's not always economically feasible in the short run. In the long run, it would pay off, but we have to worry about earning money NOW.

One of the worst aspects of "fast and cheap" mentality is that code is usually thrown together without good structure. When the inevitable bug-fixes and enhancements are added, the code becomes a little more unmanageable. As more bug-fixes and enhancements are added, this further increases the unmanageability. Over time, we have the "US Tax Code" style of programming. Any individual fix might make sense in its context, but throw it all together and it's a mess.

I love my job and so far I've been given a lot of freedom to implement things properly, but not everyone has the luxury. I sympathize with you and I wish you the best of luck.

Cheers,
Ovid

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In reply to (Ovid) RE: Good, Fast, Cheap: pick the last two or get out! by Ovid
in thread Good, Fast, Cheap: pick the last two or get out! by jeffa

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