Time to vent?



  • So this morning my roommate took the car into the dealer.  It had been running hot while on the highway but she was a bit lazy in bringing it in for maintenance (she's in charge of this stuff).  Turns out several components were damaged because the radiator had a leak.  the maintenance light had burned out 6 months ago and we decided it wasn't worth paying the cost for them to tear apart the dashboard to get to it.  The total resulting cost 7grand could have been avoided simply by replacing the bulb thus providing warning about the radiator leak.  It also would have helped had we brought it in sooner.

     The resulting nightmare made me think about how we as developers sometimes apply things like band-aid solutions instead of actually solving the problem,  This often is due to things such as time contraints, pressure from management, cost, etc).  Basically the emphasis is more on putting things off until you have to deal with them.  In the long run this attitude creates more cost to the bottom line. 

     All in all I try to do things the right way whenever possible, Staying well past 5pm on some days.  However some things I can't fix (ie systems run by corporate) and thus a bandaid becomes necessary.  Oh if only the world was perfect... 



  • I worked in video games the last few years, and the same attitude is pervasive in the two companies I worked for.  Having a "just get it done" attitude is good in general, but too often I found that a bandaid I had done to give me time to fix something for real just became a terrible status quo because the bosses thought my time was better spent elsewhere, "fighting other fires".  To your point, near the end of working for the second company, I spent about 3 months unwinding and fixing up 'undo' and everything it touched in a game tool, after the tool had been in use for about a year, and the feature had been delivered unreliable and gradually bitrotted to totally debilitating if invoked.  In the end, many hands had made half-implemented separate undo functionality for specific components, and essentially ridden over and reversed the effects of the broken main undo system, causing the whole thing to crash if you hit undo more times than the last tool was able to handle by itself.

    It didn't help that management didn't rethink 'feature driven development' until after laying off 9 of 12 people, but it may have made decisions about throwing away code a bit easier.



  • I am feeling a wee bit under the weather today too. I am in charge of the garbage disposal at home and I am just pissed off because the garbage truck driver deliberately passed by our house without batting an eyelash. What a jerk!



  • @pathill said:

    I am feeling a wee bit under the weather today too. I am in charge of the garbage disposal at home and I am just pissed off because the garbage truck driver deliberately passed by our house without batting an eyelash. What a jerk!
    Now that's venting!  You didn't even need a specialized beer can for that one.



  • I worked for a similar style of "management".  No cares about design, compatibility, support....just the ever present "Get it done, we don't care how".  In the end, it came back to bite them and I switched employers! 



  • @galgorah said:

    So this morning my roommate took the car into the dealer.  It had been running hot while on the highway but she was a bit lazy in bringing it in for maintenance (she's in charge of this stuff).  Turns out several components were damaged because the radiator had a leak.  the maintenance light had burned out 6 months ago and we decided it wasn't worth paying the cost for them to tear apart the dashboard to get to it.  The total resulting cost 7grand could have been avoided simply by replacing the bulb thus providing warning about the radiator leak.  It also would have helped had we brought it in sooner.

     The resulting nightmare made me think about how we as developers sometimes apply things like band-aid solutions instead of actually solving the problem,  This often is due to things such as time contraints, pressure from management, cost, etc).  Basically the emphasis is more on putting things off until you have to deal with them.  In the long run this attitude creates more cost to the bottom line. 

     All in all I try to do things the right way whenever possible, Staying well past 5pm on some days.  However some things I can't fix (ie systems run by corporate) and thus a bandaid becomes necessary.  Oh if only the world was perfect... 

    WTF? 7 grand?? Radiator leak? maintainance light?
    Dude!

    (insert -Nelson's ha ha here, or subsitute with some lolcat or facepalm pic)



  • @arty said:

    I worked in video games the last few years, and the same attitude is pervasive in the two companies I worked for.  Having a "just get it done" attitude is good in general, but too often I found that a bandaid I had done to give me time to fix something for real just became a terrible status quo because the bosses thought my time was better spent elsewhere, "fighting other fires".  To your point, near the end of working for the second company, I spent about 3 months unwinding and fixing up 'undo' and everything it touched in a game tool, after the tool had been in use for about a year, and the feature had been delivered unreliable and gradually bitrotted to totally debilitating if invoked.  In the end, many hands had made half-implemented separate undo functionality for specific components, and essentially ridden over and reversed the effects of the broken main undo system, causing the whole thing to crash if you hit undo more times than the last tool was able to handle by itself.

    It didn't help that management didn't rethink 'feature driven development' until after laying off 9 of 12 people, but it may have made decisions about throwing away code a bit easier.

     

    I always thought that code quality in games wasn't all that important because they have such a short usage life. I mean some games keep on trucking with new versions and such, but console games particularly just seem to have a main release, then perhaps 1 or 2 patch releases and that's it. No further development necessary. 



  • @stratos said:

    I always thought that code quality in games wasn't all that important because they have such a short usage life.
     

    New games aren't written from scratch, you know. :) 

    The engine especially, if it's a good one, usually has a very long life. Consider how the Unreal, QuakeII and Source engines were repurposed for other games, in the process being updated, tweaked and maintained.

    And if I wanted excellent physics in my game, I'd totally call Valve for a Havok license.




  • @dhromed said:

    And if I wanted excellent physics in my game, I'd totally call Valve for a Havok license.

    Havok doesn't belong to Valve, they license it themselves.



  • @dhromed said:

    @stratos said:

    I always thought that code quality in games wasn't all that important because they have such a short usage life.
     

    New games aren't written from scratch, you know. :) 

    The engine especially, if it's a good one, usually has a very long life. Consider how the Unreal, QuakeII and Source engines were repurposed for other games, in the process being updated, tweaked and maintained.

    And if I wanted excellent physics in my game, I'd totally call Valve for a Havok license.

     

    Yes but I would imagine that if I license a 3D engine, or physics system, I more or less get a black box to integrate in my code, and that if I find a bug I would contact my supplier and inform them that i want that shit fixed because I paid money.

     



  • @valdarrant said:

    I worked for a similar style of "management".  No cares about design, compatibility, support....just the ever present "Get it done, we don't care how".  In the end, it came back to bite them and I switched employers! 

    Talk about playing necromancer, at 493 days this zombie is dying for your gooey brain-filled skull - Canary Crap Covered Rubber Cross Holy Hell Dogs**t! - [/vent]
    Wait, I'm not helping the situation am I...
    PS clicking 'Help' to see if angle-brackets can be posted here gives "Server Error in '/' Application", WTF - Rotting Chunk of Diseased Bandy-Legged Sodomizing Zombie Guts! [/vent multiplier=2]



  • @stratos said:

    Yes but I would imagine that if I license a 3D engine, or physics system, I more or less get a black box to integrate in my code, and that if I find a bug I would contact my supplier and inform them that i want that shit fixed because I paid money.
     

    Excellent.

    So you agree that game code does not have a short usage life, but is actively maintained.



  • @Spectre said:

    Havok doesn't belong to Valve
     

    I was unaware of this.


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