Wojtek Skulski wrote:
On Tue, 28 Dec 2010, Rene A. Krywult wrote:
>The program ran once a month, every month it crashed,
>and it took the original programmer about 1 week each month
> (with 10 hour working days!) to "fix" the bug.
A very smart guy. The purpose of life is not to write good code (or bad code), but to stay employed and be productive for the employer. From what you said, this programmer worked 50 hours every month on a critical problem to enable the supermarket chain to operate. As long as the employer is perceiving this as a critical task, the guy would have a safe future.
I can share a similar story from my former workplace. A certain engineer designed all control electronics for a critical part of the lab using so-called Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). I was always curious, why he did so, because a simple 8051 microcontroller would be up to the task in most cases. Then I learned the answer. He is still employed, while I am not.
The guy knew the rules. He used a tool which is so horrendously complicated that nobody in the entire lab (500 people) would ever be able to figure out what was going on. The code running on these devices is complete mess (I saw it once) because FPGAs are not meant to be used like simple microcontrollers. So the guy first sold the FPGAs to the lab as a "modern tool", and then he quietly implemented the entire mess using this tool. Nobody will ever dare to kick him out.
> Then he had a heart attack, and I, a newcomer to PL/I had to take
> over.....
If you were smart then you would have worked 100 hours every month fixing the same bug over and over again. Did you? Are you still employed there?
W.
I disagree. The following are somes quotes from Niklaus Wirth (
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/niklaus_wirth.html)
* But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity.
* The idea that one might derive satisfaction from his or her successful work, because that work is ingenious, beautiful, or just pleasing, has become ridiculed.
* Yet, I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.
And a japanese saying sets "It is better to walk well than to arrive"
Regards
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Received on Thu Dec 30 2010 - 11:34:34 UTC