Re:Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professio...
by p_l on Friday June 05, 2020 @10:46AM
(#23429149)
Except the people who did the "tape it together"? Those were the same people who made the long process before. That's why they could just tape it together, they were deep in the knowledge of the system they were fixing and thus could tape a kludge together to get them back.
Re:Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professio...
by partomniscient on Friday June 05, 2020 @10:51AM
(#23429201)
But that's because in those days the people that built the thing have to do production support once it goes live. That doesn't happen so much in larger organisations because they have separate teams divided along "add/build something new" and "keep it going" boundaries without a lot of cross-pollination.
Re:Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professio...
by p_l on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:27AM
(#23464831)
There's also the difference between building bottom up with full knowledge of what you built, like the Apollo program team had (even if they bought something externally, the people who made it were available to the team, and/or the team studied the items in depth).
And then there's modern world of slapping together libraries that are often not known, sometimes with closed source, sometimes without real documentation. I've had to use disassembler in the past to access framework we were supposed to use...
It also made me think of the Apollo 13 movie.
The engineering/process people got the thing into space, the adaptable/dynamic solve it with 'gaffer-tape and whatever is laying around' people got the thing home.
We still need both approaches for different reasons.
“Personal survivor bias“ accidentally chooses a side for you.
Experience eventually makes one realise there aren't diametrically opposing sides, just different capabilities needed in different circumstances.