Re:Stop complaining and pay programmers more
by mikecotton on Thursday July 01, 2010 @01:00AM
(#1477132)
Unless management has made the decision to invest in a solid-wall backstop of functional tests, then no amount of great programmers can clean up a codebase. I've known and learned from some of the best coders alive, and none of them would wade into a known-good codebase that they didn't have solid experience with or responsibility for and start refactoring. Code that they were on the hook for? Open season. Code that someone else was going to get the call on at 3 a.m.? Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Given that, I wouldn't expect '50% of any companies' to be good. "If it ain't broke..." is really good advice about 95% of the time. If you're 50-100% overbooked, you don't screw with other peoples' code just to try to make things better around the office.
Isn't this what happened throughout the industry? (with a very few exceptions).
This is exactly what makes my belief about "great programmers" just went out of the window: no matter how great an individual is, the fact that plenty software houses have terrible code base show something else.
People can blame the businesses, the time-to-market, the deadline or whatnot and I believe you guys.
But at the same time, are you being fair toward your profession at the same time?
If great programmers do exist, I'm expecting them to change these ugly code bases everywhere to the point where 50% of any companies out there would have good code base (and that includes unit-tests)