Coding Off Days!!!

[DimPrawn]

If companies sacked their "star" coders, the ones who sit alone and never communicate, the ones "well I'm a coding genius", the ones "I once wrote a chess AI engine in 400 bytes" types, and hired communicators, they'd slash their IT budgets in half.

[Diestl]

The true cost of code is the support and enhancement.

Unmaintable "write only" code might make you feel big and clever, but it costs companies a fortune when you have left.

The simplest code is the code that costs a company the least money.

I try and make my code impossible for anyone other than myself to maintain so I get called back when they need to fix it.

But seriously if you're code is written well and variables and Types are names appropriately then any decent programmer should be able to understand it. Anything else is anal and time wasting.

[Diestl]

If companies sacked their "star" coders, the ones who sit alone and never communicate, the ones "well I'm a coding genius", the ones "I once wrote a chess AI engine in 400 bytes" types, and hired communicators, they'd slash their IT budgets in half.

Yes then the stars would work for the competition who would quickly triple their profits with innovative new software that a team of mediocre monkeys would take 10 years to write. Also I never said anything about communication I think team members should communicate about higher level stuff like requirements, not "You never put an underscore on that private member, this will add £100,000 to the project in maintenance costs!".

[DimPrawn]

You've not been in the IT industry long have you?

[Fishface]

If companies sacked their "star" coders, the ones who sit alone and never communicate, the ones "well I'm a coding genius", the ones "I once wrote a chess AI engine in 400 bytes" types, and hired communicators, they'd slash their IT budgets in half.

"communicators" like to have meetings and meetings about meetings and waste time and money doing so.

I have been in a situation were there was 3 teams of PM's - one in the UK, one their IT outsourcer and one team in India.

12 PM's spent 9 months writing up requirments and having meetings.

This must have cost a fortune.

In the end they bought from a 4th party with a few customisations.

I don't know why PM's suck up to companies and try to convince them they have business skill when the company views them as project police only.

[DimPrawn]

9 months in the lifetime of a large-scale product or project is nothing.

How much money does it cost if you build the system to the wrong requirements, or "super coders" are just left to produce something only the "super coders" can understand, and all the "super coders" have left.

You are left with a product or project that costs 10x the dev costs to maintain, support, enhance and re-develop.

Your fired!

DimPrawn in Alan Sugar mode.

[Diestl]

You've not been in the IT industry long have you?

You re not a great debater are you.

[Diestl]

9 months in the lifetime of a large-scale product or project is nothing.

How much money does it cost if you build the system to the wrong requirements, or "super coders" are just left to produce something only the "super coders" can understand, and all the "super coders" have left.

You are left with a product or project that costs 10x the dev costs to maintain, support, enhance and re-develop.

Your fired!

DimPrawn in Alan Sugar mode.

This sounds increasingly like someone who has only read books about developing systems with no real experience. Or one of those "Lets have 10 meetings about this line of code and why we should change it." guys.

[SandyDown]

This sounds increasingly like someone who has only read books about developing systems with no real experience. Or one of those "Lets have 10 meetings about this line of code and why we should change it." guys.

Dim talking sense.

Diestl and anyone like him = code monkey cowboys

[Fishface]

9 months in the lifetime of a large-scale product or project is nothing.

its an expensive PM cluster f**k - and mainly ego posturing than work.

I think PM's are very useful at being PM's but they try to do other stuff which is way beyond them and usually waste a lot of time doing it unsuccessfuly.

PM's you're great but please keep your feet on the ground.