A Trend Towards Lower Software Maintenance Budgets?

[Mark McIntyre]

No, you should call a spade a spade. If you have to hide behind buzz
words, either your organisation and/or process is broken.

Welcome to Fantasy island.

Show me a senior manager who prefers "rewrite" to "refactor", or
"sack" to "downsize" for that matter.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Ian Collins]

Welcome to Fantasy island.

Show me a senior manager who prefers "rewrite" to "refactor", or
"sack" to "downsize" for that matter.

Me?

 

[Malcolm McLean]

Me?

Social manipulation works.
Most people, if you do a straw poll, will say that what you call the beer,
soap powder, or whatever has no impact on their purchasing decison. However
manufacturers spend large sums of money on brand management.

Similarly if you ask a manager, upfront, "do you prefer people to speak
honestly or do you like buzzwords?", they will usually say that they believe
in plain English. Sometimes it is true, but generally the situation is that,
like the consumers, they have little insight into their own behaviour.
XP works very largely because it reChristens existing practise, such as
rewriting code, patch and fix, and feature creep, instead of trying to force
a alien mould onto the programmer. There's more it than that, of course, but
the marketing aspect shouldn't be downplayed.

 

[Ian Collins]

Social manipulation works.
Most people, if you do a straw poll, will say that what you call the
beer, soap powder, or whatever has no impact on their purchasing
decison. However manufacturers spend large sums of money on brand
management.

Similarly if you ask a manager, upfront, "do you prefer people to speak
honestly or do you like buzzwords?", they will usually say that they
believe in plain English. Sometimes it is true, but generally the
situation is that, like the consumers, they have little insight into
their own behaviour.

That's one way that Kiwis differ from us Poms, a lot more straight
talking goes on down here!

XP works very largely because it reChristens existing practise, such as
rewriting code, patch and fix, and feature creep, instead of trying to
force a alien mould onto the programmer. There's more it than that, of
course, but the marketing aspect shouldn't be downplayed.

There's a lot more to it than that.

 

[Chris Dollin]

I've heard enough people abuse the term to realise that

/for them/

it is largely a euphemism for rewriting.

You don't have to perpetuate their abuse.

 

[Chris Dollin]

Malcolm McLean wrote:
There's a lot more to it than that.

And less of the rechristening than Malcolm implies.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

There's a lot more to it than that.

Option 1:
"We use some fairly simple techniques to increase productivity. Nothing that
an averagely competent programmer couldn't pick up and see the sense of in a
few days".
Option 2:
"We use a very advanced and sophisticated methodology in which I am an
expert."

Which is more likely to advance the interests of the project? Which is
likely to advance the interests of the manager?

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Me?

IME you're in a minority of two.

And I've yet to meet any board member who would use the word "fire"
when another more user-friendly word was available.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Mark McIntyre]

And less of the rechristening than Malcolm implies.

Well, I can see you two have bought the marketing spiel...

gd&r.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Ian Collins]

Well, I can see you two have bought the marketing spiel...

gd&r.

Nope, just spent time with the originators and some early adopters of XP
and converted a company over to it with very successful results. No
marketing in sight.

 

[Ian Collins]

Option 1:
"We use some fairly simple techniques to increase productivity. Nothing
that an averagely competent programmer couldn't pick up and see the
sense of in a few days".
Option 2:
"We use a very advanced and sophisticated methodology in which I am an
expert."

Which is more likely to advance the interests of the project? Which is
likely to advance the interests of the manager?

I was an outright cynic after reading the publicity materials, I was
converted after seeing the process in action and spending some time with
its originator.

 

[Chris Dollin]

Well, I can see you two have bought the marketing spiel...

Independently of whether I've bought into the spiel, Malcolm is not
accurately representing the content of XP as portrayed by the books
by its proponents and the XP & TDD mailing lists. You may -- and
some have -- critique the actual practices of XP or claim that its
areas of applicability are not usefully wide, but claiming that
"XP works very largely because it reChristens existing practise,
such as rewriting code, patch and fix, and feature creep" is,
in my view, both inaccurate and actively misleading.

 

[Charlie Gordon]

Yes. it would be easier to say that. But in the real world code often
does a lot more than people think....


low skilled people can not code anything up in C.

I agree: they seem more likely to do so in C++, Perl, java, php, javascript,
python...

C aint for sissies ;-)

 

[santosh]

I agree: they seem more likely to do so in C++, Perl, java, php,
javascript, python...

C aint for sissies ;-)

I would dispute including C++ in that list. If anything, it's even
trickier to use properly than C, IME.

 

[Richard]

I would dispute including C++ in that list. If anything, it's even
trickier to use properly than C, IME.

100% agreed. I have worked on some hideous C++ frameworks and
debugging/extending them was a nightmare. You can forget about "reading
the code" since half the operators and functions are
overloaded. Nightmare is a TOTAL understatement. As a result, (purely
from practical maintenance), I despise C++ with a passion.

 

[Charlie Gordon]

100% agreed. I have worked on some hideous C++ frameworks and
debugging/extending them was a nightmare. You can forget about "reading
the code" since half the operators and functions are
overloaded. Nightmare is a TOTAL understatement. As a result, (purely
from practical maintenance), I despise C++ with a passion.

I completely agree with you. But given the huge success of C++, there must
be a mass of low skilled people that commit a lot of low grade code, adding
to the nightmare. std::string and object orientation make C++ look more
accessible to low skilled programmers. Low skilled managers believe that
too... Sturgeon was an optimist.

 

[Keith Willis]

I would dispute including C++ in that list. If anything, it's even
trickier to use properly than C, IME.

Most programming languages are a bit like a violin... pretty easy to
use, but bloody difficult to use _well_ without years of practice.