On 14/11/2011 05:35 PM, Warp wrote:

>    I suppose I should be (and I *am*) very glad to be, at least at the
> moment, in a job where I get to solve and implement real, interesting
> programming problems (such as problems related to geometry, combinatorics,
> low and high level program optimization, and so on) with immediate visible
> results and payoff (namely: a playable computer game), where I make the
> programming decisions and design.

I love how when I did my "computer science" degree at uni, the entire 
course was predicated around the idea that you will be writing large 
enterprise systems which consist of a database backend, and a Java or 
HTML front-end, possibly with some middleware in the center. Because, 
seriously, that's all there is, isn't it? It's not like anybody writes 
device drivers, or industrial control software, or computer games, or 
compilers and interpretters, or anything that isn't an enterprise CRUD 
system...

...oh, wait. :-P

>    I have seen a glimpse of what the "real" world of commercial programming
> is, though, as I temporarily had a training job in a much larger firm.
> It was a nightmare. CEOs would promise clients results with absolutely
> unrealistic dealines, without consulting the project manager, the lead
> programmer or any of the development staff, forcing the otherwise very
> competent developers to create a haphazard mess with little to no planning
> in a record time, with the infrastructure of the project constantly changing
> without proper information being delivered to the programmers (which caused
> much of the work to have to be rewritten), with no clear instructions on
> what should be done when, where and how, and what's worse, with the project
> manager, who in this case was also the lead programmer, being forced to sit
> in completely useless meetings with the clients and CEOs, where requirements
> would constantly change and unrealistic expectations would be constantly
> presented.

You mean you worked for a Daily WTF 100 company?

Damn, that must have been fun.

Daft thing is, I imagine time and again it plays out like this:

Sales team: We will deliver this application in 3 weeks.

Dev team: What?! That's impossible! It would take at least 9 months to 
implement that kind of functionality.

Management team: But we told the customer it will take 3 weeks. YOU MUST 
DO IT IN 3 WEEKS!!

So the dev team go off and work heroic miracles to cobble together some 
barely-functional crock of junk in just 3 weeks. And then it gets 
delivered to the customer. And then management sit back and say "gee, I 
guess it *was* a realistic deadline after all; I'll remember that for 
the future..."

And so the cycle is perpetuated forever...

You must be *so glad* you don't work there now.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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