Re^5: Analyzing large Perl code base.

in reply to Re^4: Analyzing large Perl code base.
in thread Analyzing large Perl code base.

That's perfect - you get to write your own specs! :-)

Developer: What's the spec for feature X?
Marketing: Uhhh ... well, what does it do now?
Developer: It should do foo, bar, and baz.
Marketing: Ok, sounds good to me.
Developer: Do you mind if I write that up and send it to you for a signature?
Marketing: (worried tone) Why would you do that?
Developer: Just so that if I screw up, you can hold my feet to the fire.
Marketing: (relieved tone) Oh, ok!

So, you then write whatever you want, Marketing signs off on it, and you go write your test suite, refactor against it, and everyone goes home.

Comment on Re^5: Analyzing large Perl code base.

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Re^6: Analyzing large Perl code base. by kscaldef (Pilgrim) on Apr 17, 2005 at 18:09 UTC
That may work okay for some places, particularly if your revenue stream is only loosely coupled to the code in question. Personally, the code I work on has a lot of revenue pushed through it every day, in a very quantitative manner. So, refactoring from what it does do to what it "should" do is fairly risky. What looks best to the developer isn't always best for the business, and even if a change is for the better any unexpected changes in the metrics raise flags. YMMV, but I think that in a organization of any significant size, it's generally a bad idea for developers to make unilateral decisions about how the product should be changed.	[reply]
Re^7: Analyzing large Perl code base. by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Apr 18, 2005 at 12:43 UTC
. . . in a organization of any significant size, it's generally a bad idea for developers to make unilateral decisions about how the product should be changed. Yes, you are absolutely correct. Now, if only Marketing or the business units would get their heads out of the collective asses long enough to actually provide usable direction to us developers, we could all go home and have milk and cookies before naptime. I have worked at 9 different places in the past 7 years. At 5 of them, developers wrote specifications. At 2 of them, developers co-wrote specifications. So, in less than a quarter of the places I have worked at, developers received usable specs. I've been lucky. My wife's blog	[reply]

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