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Re:The Case for Slow Programming by jodrellblank on Tuesday December 02, 2014 @01:12AM (#8685953)
"that will become unmaintainable in 1 year" or "that will be a problem if we ever switch databases" or whatever and sure enough, a year later, the team has to do that... and that 1 guy was fucking RIGHT.

And sometimes YAGNI, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, nice problem to have, good enough is good enough, do the simplest thing that could possibly work, premature optimization, perfect is the enemy of good, grass is always greener somewhere else, better a bird in the hand than two in the bush, he's right but it's still not worth the cost right now, etc.

Re:The Case for Slow Programming by hvidgaard on Tuesday December 02, 2014 @03:04AM (#8686174)
That is a perfect mindset to have to the problem of the type "that will be a problem if we ever switch databases". However, "that will become unmaintainable in 1 year" is a "bridge" you want to cross sooner rather than later. If you have a deadline to meet, fine, but come back and fix it asap if the software is something that needs to be maintained. I really cannot explain it well, it's just something most developers realize after a while when they've had to maintain an old codebase.

They key point however is, that one guys insight shouldn't be ignored. You can take the words of wisdom and proceed to not do anything about it, but at least you know the cost down the road. All experienced managers I know personally, know the cost of umaintainable software and are more than willing to do something about it if ressources allow it. They need to, otherwise it's their ass that is in the line of fire when it cost a factor 10 to implement a new feature and bugs creep up at the customer time after time, even though they spend a factor 10 more on QA.