I'll defer on the company thing. As for code quality, when working with rather crufty code put together by someone of less experience, it's tempting to let loose with the Perl Chainsaw. Even when first reading through high-quality code, you're likely to see at least a few things that could be strengthened.

My advice on this (from bitter and good experiences) is to focus on the main thing. It's perfectly acceptable to take notes on things to change for later, but resist the temptation as much as you can. When you've done the main thing, then stop holding your nose and fix what worked but needed improvement.

Web sites and specs

There's no reason you can't have adequate specs. If your customers don't know what they want, how will you know when you're done? If the specs keep changing, your mission keeps changing, and you will lose your focus and spend more time and money that way. (I think we all know that, but it takes a lot of work to tell a customer that, and stick to it. More power to you!)

Web companies and security

Anecdotal quote from a R_____fish employee: "What do I look like, an Infrastructure Engineer? I'm an Information Architect!" Dunno if that's a pervasive attitude, but security is hard enough to do well even when you're trying that I doubt many companies are as secure as they think.

CPAN

Again, I defer on the company thing. Personally, with the software I write, I try not to use modules unnecessarily. (I have a lot on my development machine, but I try to reduce dependencies in deliverables as much as possible.) You won't see me writing my own XML Parser to give to a customer, for example, but you may see me write my own leap year routine (much to my chagrin, monks who've been around for a while will remember my last attempt was not so good.) I do take the attitude, "Love me, love my modules."

In reply to Re: What quality is your company's code? by chromatic
in thread What quality is your company's code? by Ovid

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