Rod at work (9/22/2016)
Jeff Moden (9/21/2016)
djackson 22568 (9/21/2016)
Jeff Moden (9/21/2016)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (9/21/2016)
Jeff Moden (9/19/2016)
To be honest, I've yet to run into a supposed 10X programmer that's worth their salt.Look in the mirror
Thank you for the compliment but I'm definitely not a 10X programmer. In fact, I'm sub 1X because it takes me a bit extra time to do testing so the QA doesn't have to kick it back for some reason.
Which is why I agree with Steve. It isn't how much you do, it is how good you do.
Think of it this way, if you spend an extra hour doing testing, and it eliminates 10 hours of testing in QA, isn't that better?
Heh... no doubt there and fully agreed! It's just not what most people would expect as a 10X programmer. Most people think 10X is quantity and I guess that's what I meant by my initial comment.
And, unfortunately, some shops don't believe in the quality and bug free thing. All they can think of is deadlines that someone determined while riding in an elevator or on the golf course.
One of my mantra's is "Just because you want it real bad doesn't mean that I'll ever give it to them that way... even if it doesn't meet their unreasonable deadline to push out bad product". 😀
Jeff, I think you've made a very good point here, one which I didn't think of when Steve first wrote the article upon which this thread is based. The point you've made is that meeting deadlines isn't the single greatest metric that we should use for good software, but that it still is to a large extent, the only metric that many companies/agencies use. I'm not saying deadlines should always be ignored. I'm just saying that single minded allegiance to deadlines alone will lead to people writing over other people's code, in an effort to get things done ASAP.
Exactly. Thanks for the feedback, Rod.
To continue, deadlines are, in fact, important. I just don't believe in meeting a deadline by delivering "dead" code or dying trying to hit it with the right code. A lot of "bad code" is because people with kids are trying to keep their jobs and so believe that pleasing a manager that regularly schedules over-aggressively and totally inflexibly need to change their ways, especially if it's a "7 Red Lines" project.
The Expert and 7 Red Lines (if you haven't seen this before, then caution... you might die watching it either laughing or crying because it's oh so true) 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.