Devnote Tuesday: Smooth Transitions

[softweir]

@Wallygator: You missed one important phrase from HarvesteR's account of his doings: "Fixing issues". Specifically, he was fixing issues that came up during integration of the latest modules into the same internal version. In other words, he was bug-fixing, or organising bug-fixing. (Sometimes, telling the right programmer that the bug is probably in their module is as important as the programmer going away and finding the fault. And this requires a programmer who has a better overview of the entire code, so this job is usually handled by the most senior programmer. Senior programmers often do very little coding because they are so busy organising other programmers! And no, you can't get a manager to do the job because they don't understand the code.)

So, no, this doesn't sound like "things are not going so well". It sounds to me like a large and complex program is reaching its final stages and some of the modules are glitching as a result of being made to work together for the first time. This happens, and the more modules you add, the greater the number of glitches you can expect, so as the program grows, the glitches become more numerous. But this is an issue all experienced coders expect (and which sane managers allow for) and means nothing: the guys just have to dig in and sort those issues, one-by-one.

So, to sum up: HarvesteR has been very busy doing things that are not at all surprising, and as a result he has not been doing a lot of coding -- which is not surprising, or worrying, and certainly not cause for concern.

[Starwaster]

@Wallygator: You missed one important phrase from HarvesteR's account of his doings: "Fixing issues". Specifically, he was fixing issues that came up during integration of the latest modules into the same internal version. In other words, he was bug-fixing, or organising bug-fixing. (Sometimes, telling the right programmer that the bug is probably in their module is as important as the programmer going away and finding the fault. And this requires a programmer who has a better overview of the entire code, so this job is usually handled by the most senior programmer. Senior programmers often do very little coding because they are so busy organising other programmers! And no, you can't get a manager to do the job because they don't understand the code.)

So, no, this doesn't sound like "things are not going so well". It sounds to me like a large and complex program is reaching its final stages and some of the modules are glitching as a result of being made to work together for the first time. This happens, and the more modules you add, the greater the number of glitches you can expect, so as the program grows, the glitches become more numerous. But this is an issue all experienced coders expect (and which sane managers allow for) and means nothing: the guys just have to dig in and sort those issues, one-by-one.

So, to sum up: HarvesteR has been very busy doing things that are not at all surprising, and as a result he has not been doing a lot of coding -- which is not surprising, or worrying, and certainly not cause for concern.

yeah, it's just business as usual for a software developer and not something that should panic Chicken Little into frantically watching for pieces of falling sky.