Jeff Moden (10/21/2012)
While I agree that some developers are better than others and some deserve to be shot out of a cannon into a stone wall, I think way too much onus is put on the developer for writing quality code that won't break somewhere down the road especially in the case of a major increase in scale as so may software products are exposed to.
If the major scale increase is explicitly pointed out in the requirements and sufficient resource (time, equipment, people) is provided to do testing at that increased scale before release, I think it's fair to put that onus on the development team. If it isn't clearly there in the requirement, then it's an enhancement. Even if it is there in the requirement, it may be appropriate to make an early release with scaling restrictions (which have to be very clearly documented) and it would be unreasonable to expect that release to support the increased scale, because product development to provide the increased scale would not yet have been done.
It takes a team to make it and it takes a team to break it. The "team" starts with management and is quickly destroyed by some of the ridiculous schedules they put on developers.
It often ends with management too - one manager can easily break a development. The thing to do is to try to avoid working for or doing business with companies that employ incompetent managers, but that isn't always easy.
They seem to forget that if you want something real bad, you'll normally get it that way. 😉
That's almost a definition of someone with a sales or accounting background "managing" development - almost because to be 100% you have to omit "seems to".
Tom