Submitted 11 months ago by Aboel3z@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev
Some of us will even remember when compilers ran on big central computers, and you might have to wait 15–30 minutes to find out if your code was syntactically correct (let alone if it worked.)
My father remembers when he wrote code printed on a set of punched cards, they traveled several hours on an evening train to a warehouse with a big government statistics computer (that was too busy during daytime), the result came back by train next morning. Syntax error? try again tomorrow…
This is the basis behind scrum. Throw some customer feedback on those smaller releases and plan correction good to go.
Go away middle manager, this is not how software development functions. Shoo.
Except it is? Instead of cramming 22 new features, 198 bug fixes, and 3 usage changes in the next version, taking 24 months of dev time, one could release the next version with 1 new feature and however many bug fixes fit in the time frame, and release it in 4 to 6 weeks
And you avoid making an app that you show to the customer for the first time only for them to say, “What the hell is this?” My company used waterfall for the longest time, and this happened several times. It was really frustrating.
That seems so smart, let’s call it something smart, like what about “Agility”?
Did you even read the article BTW?
benjhm@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
This principle works most but not all the time. I develop a climate-system model that evolved with many small steps over 23 years. So it has many patchy fixes as climate policy structure changed, gases and sectors added etc. Then converted from java to scala module by module (out of ±50) , each step checking the plots looked as before. Result is it works, but parts are messy with legacy options and outdated code style. So sometimes it’s necessary to radically rethink the structure, take big bold steps before it works again, that’s hard. Scala type system, with hints from compiler (and “metals”) help make such refactoring easier (wouldn’t want to do this in python).