One thing I'd like to add - it might sound a little condescending when I say some changes should be "trivial". I've been a software developer for almost 20 years. Every project I've worked on, no matter how big or small, has always started where changes of almost any size would be trivial to make without affecting the existing code. Adding new features would require minimal changes to what's already there.
This inevitably lasts at most a week. Then it's more fragile than a house of cards on a Jenga stack. If you move your hands too close to the keyboard things break in code that hasn't changed since day 1.
I say it with affection and more than my fair share of "how things should be" vs the reality of actual coding.
I fullheartedly agree to every single word. When I was leading a software Q&A team with many "minor improvements" made or bugs fixed we encountered three new ones leaving the devs clueless about the correlation at first.
House of cards is a great metaphore in this context.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
1. I do not work there any more, so I am not offended. And yes, the platform was a nightmare and everyone knew it. It was a solution from a company we had bought and had to use, but it was simply bad.
2. Do you really think that STT is built more stable? WTH?
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
1. I do not work there any more, so I am not offended. And yes, the platform was a nightmare and everyone knew it. It was a solution from a company we had bought and had to use, but it was simply bad.
2. Do you really think that STT is built more stable? WTH?
I hate to say it, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but if the result of your dev team is that fragile - they/you are doing something very wrong
You're right, it is very wrong. But most of my jobs have been at companies where dev work was an afterthought or necessary evil. An insurance company, for example. They need in house coders because it's arguably better/cheaper/more efficient than taking something off the shelf, but their focus is on insurance, not dev work. They're more interested in getting things done right now so they can use the product than getting it done right so that the product is a good piece of software.
The company I'm at right now is kinda similar - they're a financial company, albeit with a huge IT and dev department. They're a lot better than a lot of other places I've worked with this approach, but it's still often "hurry and meet the deadline, we'll make it good later." Then the next priority comes up and that "later" never comes along.
A video game like STT is somewhat different, because the product is the software. But there's still likely someone watching the books wanting the devs to get things done sooner so they can get the product out the door - with the promise that they can go back and fix things later.
Comments
House of cards is a great metaphore in this context.
2. Do you really think that STT is built more stable? WTH?
No, regarding STT - I don’t think so
You're right, it is very wrong. But most of my jobs have been at companies where dev work was an afterthought or necessary evil. An insurance company, for example. They need in house coders because it's arguably better/cheaper/more efficient than taking something off the shelf, but their focus is on insurance, not dev work. They're more interested in getting things done right now so they can use the product than getting it done right so that the product is a good piece of software.
The company I'm at right now is kinda similar - they're a financial company, albeit with a huge IT and dev department. They're a lot better than a lot of other places I've worked with this approach, but it's still often "hurry and meet the deadline, we'll make it good later." Then the next priority comes up and that "later" never comes along.
A video game like STT is somewhat different, because the product is the software. But there's still likely someone watching the books wanting the devs to get things done sooner so they can get the product out the door - with the promise that they can go back and fix things later.