Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!
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Developers, despair: Half your time is wasted on bad code
But which half? Too much effort by developers is wasted on debugging, maintaining and fixing bad code.
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@Magus Just half? Things are better than I thought!
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I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent maintaining legacy code, and most of that is chargeable. It's a weird assertion to say maintenance is a waste and I'm mostly surprised that it's such a low percentage
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@Jaloopa Exactly! Maintenance is absolutely required in any software project, not a problem to be solved by outsourcing!
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We outsource a lot of our development and it still works like the article says. It doesn't fix the problem, unsurprisingly.
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"If you're considering buy vs. build, the answer is simple: buy. Unless you're Amazon or Microsoft, you shouldn't be deploying engineers to build data centers. Similarly, your developers should be working on what makes your business unique," he said.
Our bugs are what makes our business unique.
Ugh. My customer has a guy in a sorta influential position who is big on "We must buy COTS! Integration! APIs! Blah blah blah." Everyone hates him, but they have to deal with him.
Integrating with COTS is a worse idea than LeftPad, IMO. With COTS you end up with some giant shitburger that is inflexible and only halfway does what you need it to do. So everything is a kludge and eventually you basically rewrite stuff with a custom interface that talks to the COTS stuff in the background so that users eventually never touch the COTS stuff because it's all garbage and so is all of your stuff that sits in front of it.
Might as well start out with garbage that you built so that you only have one garbage system to deal with and you're at least able to get in and fix and change stuff.
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There are two categories of code: Stuff I wrote, and stuff that's inherently suspicious. These two categories are neither mutually exclusive nor all-encompassing, but they're definitely negatively correlated.
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@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
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@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
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@HardwareGeek said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
It crashed.
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@dcon said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
It crashed.
Ther eis a error
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I got a report about a "syntex error" today.
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@boomzilla Is that a like a regular syntax error but in New Zealand?
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@HannibalRex I figured it involved synthetic textiles of some kind.
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@mott555 My guess was synthetic textures — for CGI, or something. I m not sure what that means, but it's what I thought of.
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@HardwareGeek @mott555 Look at you two, thinking of actual things instead of taking cheap shots at New Zealand accents, now I feel silly.
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@boomzilla said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Integrating with COTS is a worse idea than LeftPad, IMO. With COTS you end up with some giant shitburger that is inflexible and only halfway does what you need it to do. So everything is a kludge and eventually you basically rewrite stuff with a custom interface that talks to the COTS stuff in the background so that users eventually never touch the COTS stuff because it's all garbage and so is all of your stuff that sits in front of it.
That's the problem of the shit COTS you're integrating with, not something inherent to the idea. Yes, I built a wrapper around Octopus Deploy to manage the record keeping in the ticketing system for our deploys, and most users never touch the COTS being wrapped. But the COTS tool manages the hard part of the process for me, and I've never had any need or desire to get in their and change their stuff.
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@boomzilla said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I got a report about a "syntex error" today.
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SynTek Megacorporation, Inc. provides most of the in game equipment used by the Interstellar Armed Forces to protect the Interstellar Alliance. SynTek operated the Phalanx Space Station, a shadowy...
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@dcon said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
It crashed.
Failed.
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@boomzilla said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I got a report about a "syntex error" today.
You work with plastic explosives?
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@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@dcon said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
It crashed.
Ther eis a error
Bad ting hepin.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@dcon said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@ben_lubar said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I'm on a support team. Pretty much all of my time is spent
trying to fix bugs reported by users who write less in their ticket than I did in this post
It not work.
It crashed.
Ther eis a error
Bad ting hepin.
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@Magus I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
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@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Magus I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
Parts of my company's code base were written eight-plus years ago - heavily used by customers, too.
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@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Magus I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
Sure, for open source CADT software. Not for actual stuff people pay for though
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@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
We shouldn't make code that people want to use as they'll want to use something else in a short period anyway.
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@dkf said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
We shouldn't make code that people want to use as they'll want to use something else in a short period anyway.
If people want to use your code they'll only ask you to write more of it.
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@HannibalRex said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek @mott555 Look at you two, thinking of actual things instead of taking cheap shots at New Zealand accents, now I feel silly.
I don't think I'd recognize a New Zealand accent if I heard one.
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@mott555 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I don't think I'd recognize a New Zealand accent if I heard one.
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@mott555 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HannibalRex said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek @mott555 Look at you two, thinking of actual things instead of taking cheap shots at New Zealand accents, now I feel silly.
I don't think I'd recognize a New Zealand accent if I heard one.
You're American, you'd probably mistake it for Geordie or something
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@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Geordie
The only two references to this I can think of are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKANv_XQRss
which features a pre-AC/DC Brian Johnson, or
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@lolwhat said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Magus I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
Parts of my company's code base were written eight-plus years ago - heavily used by customers, too.
A lot of our company code (that I work on) is that old too. Or more. And my open source project went public 16 years (yikes!) ago - sometimes I'm surprised just how well it's stood the test of time...
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@boomzilla said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@dkf said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
We shouldn't make code that people want to use as they'll want to use something else in a short period anyway.
If people want to use your code they'll only ask you to write more of it.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2003-03-03
(also works if you substitute "e-mail" with "bug reports")
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@mott555 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Jaloopa said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Geordie
The only two references to this I can think of are
A Geordie is like some kind of exotic British redneck, from what I can tell.
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@boomzilla said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
exotic British redneck
Do well off Americans keep rednecks as pets?
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@anonymous234 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Magus I've seen people argue that we shouldn't care too much about software design and bugs, because most of it ends up being abandoned and rewritten after a short period anyway.
And those people are wrong. Our company's best product is 30 years old.
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@mott555 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HannibalRex said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@HardwareGeek @mott555 Look at you two, thinking of actual things instead of taking cheap shots at New Zealand accents, now I feel silly.
I don't think I'd recognize a New Zealand accent if I heard one.
Have you seen Thor Ragnarok? The purest embodiment of the soul of New Zealand, more utterly true than anything I experienced living there, is in that movie. The rock dude.
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@Magus said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Have you seen Thor Ragnarok?
I don't even know who this is. Pop culture is not one of my strong points.
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@Magus said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
And those people are wrong. Our company's best product is 30 years old.
Oh I certainly wasn't arguing in favor of them. It seems as flawed an argument as you can get.
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@Magus said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Our company's best product is 30 years old.
best != good
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@HardwareGeek I agree. We spend a lot of time/money on maintenance. And that time/money is well spent.
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@mott555 said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
@Magus said in Paying developers to maintain code loses money! We need more outsourcing!:
Have you seen Thor Ragnarok?
I don't even know who this is. Pop culture is not one of my strong points.
It's absolutely fantastic if you ignore the Asgard bits and pretend it's not Marvel.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) ⭐ 7.9 | Action, Adventure, Comedy
