Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
Currently I work as a C programmer (with a smattering of other languages but nothing so modern as python) on a very large codebase (10s of millions of lines of code) with very little external documentation. The thing that helps me most day to day is well-commented code and coding standards. When I joined the team I work in now I had no knowledge of the source at all. I asked for documentation and was given something a decade and a half out of date. However I did have mentors who knew the code. But I asked an "overview" sort of question I often found that they would do the same as me - go looking in the code itself.
|
Now imagine that situation without having any mentors. Like this: "Our two main programmers decided to start their own company and left / died in a car crash / where fired because they mishandled the secretary". You'll be completely lost without any current documentation, even if the code is commented. It will take you weeks just to get up and running and write your first line of code AND know what you're doing.
I've been in such a situation twice, and wasn't hired. "What? You CAN'T sit down at an application having a million lines of code, 7 external libraries you never heard of before, and just start writing code... like RIGHT NOW? You actually need documents to EXPLAIN stuff? Then you're not a real programmer. Go away."
Before that happened, I often went away myself already, mostly at the point where I figured out that if I had a question, nobody from the past who could have answered it was left at the company. I don't even want to think how these programs look nowadays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crutledge
Excellent, well put. 
Software design is a skill for which I paid top dollar. There are tools just for design which can carry the system down to the lowest levels. The designer begins with the specification and expands from there. The manager can then assign related components to programmers for implementation in code. The language is immaterial. |
That is how it should work. Nowadays however, the project is often already sold to a client, deadline and all, including a first demonstration next week, before the first design decision has been made. So, a demo is hacked up to show the customer "how far we're into the project already", and because the next demo (and the next, and next) are also already planned, there actually isn't any time to properly design the application/website/whatever. It's just a bunch of (carefully scripted) demo's of different half-working functions, that are cobbled together into one application at one point.
I've seen this a few times at different companies.
Oh, and you can FORGET about any documentation.
If we built houses the way a lot of software is built, they would come crashing down our ears as soon as the builders left the premesis. Often I'm thinking I should have studied architecture or something.