Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
I worked freelance for like a decade. Then I joined a “real” studio. Literally 80% meetings, team meetings, morning stand ups, presentations, documentation, and senior reviews, then 20% actual work. My old boss was great with time management but he left and the new leads would lock you into a 3h meeting, most of it to discuss other people’s work, then expect you to make 3 days worth of edits in 3h.
I feel this meme hard.
The idea that coding is the only part of your job is "actual work" is where you're going wrong. The goal is to create robust, well-functioning software that's documented and fulfills what it needs to do, not write an arbitrary amount of code. Your job is more than just doing the part you like.
You sound like a middle manager that brings a net loss to your workplace and justifies their job as crucial because without you, the coders would all be running around the office slamming into each other like 2 year olds.
Coding is the only job. Period. The rest is housekeeping. Much like digging a ditch. It’s not going to get dug if you sit around talking about logistics and reviewing all the other ditches or wasting my time telling me again and again how the ditch needs to be dug. Nor needing hourly updates on how the ditch is coming along, so you can arbitrarily make changes.
If you think I “just don’t get it”, then that totally explains your irrelevance in the work place. Because companies have long lost their way and have prioritized the structure well beyond what they are actually meant to do: get shit done. But then you sound like the type that believes companies are crucial to our success because they funnel money back into the economy and keep society afloat (narrator: they don’t), so I’ll say good day to you sir.
If you want to do the software equivalent of digging a ditch that's cool, but I'm not sure why you would expect to get an engineer's salary for doing so.
Hey I’ve schedule a 2h Slack meeting to discuss this topic more. Please confirm your availability 🙃
I can relate.
I solved this dilemma by quitting and becoming a school bus driver. Now I only have to worry about middle-schoolers threatening to shoot me.
Problems caught early are much easier to fix than problems caught later. This applies to any project (I'm not a programmer, but an engineer in the traditional sense).
Just "doing it" without coordination and review is a great way to waste a bunch of effort down the line with re-work.
Edit: typo
While i agree with the principal statement, this also requires two things to work:
First: The scope should be defined properly, so people can contextualize what they are actually doing and reviewing.
Second: If the scope is subject to change, or parts of it are unclear, there needs to be room to consider, develop and try different variants
This is were good management is crucial, which includes giving breathing room at the start. What we tend to experience is the expectation of already good detailed results, that can be finalized but still work if things change significantly.
Documentation and testing are fundamental parts of writing code.
Also, tests ARE THE code, and equally important too! However so many people make the mistake of writing tests after the function, when the benefit is less immediate. They also have the illusion that they are done and have to do extra work. And since they didn’t write the test first, they most likely wasted a ton of time and energy on extra work of testing changes manually
I disagree unless the tests are reasonably high level.
Half the time the thing you're testing is so poorly defined that the only way to tighten that definition is to iterate.
In this sense, you're wasting time writing tests until you've iterated enough to have something worth testing.
At that point, a couple of regression tests offer the biggest bang for buck so you can sanity check things are still working when you move on to another function and forget all about this one
The first 3 are why I can't get any work done anymore. The last 3 I would absolutely love to have more time to do.
Coders who complain about documenting and tests are coders I don't want to work with
Docs and testing have no bravado, but they're important. If they're dragging you down, use your problem-solving brain and find a way to make them work for you.
(Sincerely, someone who doesn't floss)