I agree with your sentiment, but it doesn't play out in the real world the way you hope. An analogy would be that a client goes to the best sprinter in the world and says "I need you to run the 100m race tomorrow." Not a problem, right? Well, that night, the client calls the sprinter and starts to describe the outfit. Ok, still not a problem. The chicken outfit isn't aerodynamic, but he can still run the 100m race. Then, that morning, the client says "I need you to run it in world-record time."

A real world analogy is what's going on at work right now. The main application is suffering from a very poor design, continuously shifting requirements, and lots of developer turnover. This has caused it to place inordinate load upon the database server. We hadn't been able to upgrade it because the parts were unavailable. (Yes, that does happen, even to Sun servers!) So, performance degraded exponentially with the number of new users, and we've been adding 20 employees a month. So, what worked for 100 employees doesn't when you have 200+.

The VP says "I need the performance improved." We tell him your choices are:

  1. Buy more servers
  2. Rewrite the app so that it doesn't place that inordinate load

His response was "I don't like those choices. Give me another one."1 Or, how about the time we moved into a second location and had problems with the bandwidth between the buildings. That was impacting the users. So, he calls us into his office and says "What can we do to solve this, but don't suggest adding bandwidth or any new development."

It's nice when you can predict the future "needs" of your clients, but if you can do that on a regular basis, you're either in the wrong business or you ended up with a bloated mess called Windows.

  1. We wanted to say something along the lines of "Sure. Give me a second to reach up my ass for that!", but then we wouldn't be able to pay our mortgages. :-)

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose

I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested

In reply to Re: Good pain (was Re^2: Nice clothes ...) by dragonchild
in thread Nice clothes (Term::ProgressBar, perltidy, Getopt::Declare) by water

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