1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

https://youtu.be/hCebq5lLgos

 

I see an issue

 

Software and web development is in a weird place these days. I'm in the middle of it and the schedules are so short, and money is tight, but the powers that be want to sell features features features, even if they're half baked and untested.

I don't know if its just nostalgia, or its real, but I feel like so many things were better in the early 2000s.

 

Fight back

 

They can't even get Windows Explorer to work and its been 30 fucking years

 

I spent a solid hour on the phone today complaining to the powers that be about a manual that is so bad that customers would be better off without it.

Guess who they want to put in charge of manuals now? Even though its totally not my job.

Competence is rewarded with overload.

 

You're an odd one

 

Thanks I guess!

 

Just wait till you make the 'new' windows settings app and the old control panel app fight each other for control over Ethernet settings.

 

Weirdly enough you aren't the first person who's told me that story

 

Oh, trust me I did that when Windows 8 came out

Settings causes me hair loss weekly and it was completely uncalled for. There was NOTHING wrong with control panel. btw do faceplams add up? Can you get a gradual concussion?

 

Some manager needed another bullet point for their resume. "Re-imagined and implemented a user interface to bring an old product into the new millenium' or some bullshit.

I think it really took a turn for the worse when they decided that everyone has always-on internet now, and so they can just 'fix it in the next release'. Which is why they release half baked shit all the time and all the problems just languish in the backlog forever.

 

I think the worst that could happen is facial acne in the general facepalm area

 

When I went to work for a major company in FL some years ago, the technical interview process was one of the most in-depth that I had seen. Blistering. So I passed it and got hired. I started supporting a system that had no documentation. I asked if there was some documentation for it. The programming manager said the director locked up all of the documentation in a closet to keep programmers from seeing it. They wanted you to be able to figure out everything from looking at the code. I'm like ok. I can read and understand that the file layouts may have been changed over the years and the documentation may be 75% accurate at best. But at least that let me know if the system was intended to be accounts payable or receivable or some jacked-up voice response interface system. I did use the partially correct documentation to get the original intent of the system.

I'm in a similar documentation exercise right now.

 

Unless you forget to let go of your coffee cup before you facepalm...

 

Maybe not better, but simpler and with a higher barrier to entry.

Speaking as a web developer... can confirm the "features features features" mindset. It's easy to forget that your core functionality is broken when you're spending all your time bolting on shiny new stuff because you read about it on the internet.

Wait, are we talking about websites or trucks?

 

I believe it, documentation is a sore spot for everything, and managers really don't get it. To be fair, writing good documentation is hard and time consuming, but its so worth it once you have it, especially down the line when people are trying to figure shit out like you are.

I've had managers ask why I even bothered writing a document describing how something would work, and that i should just dive into implementation instead - on a product the company had never built, and was in entirely new class of devices for the company, with several new technologies that would need new PCBs, custom programming, and an entire wireless protocol for real time communication. Madness!

 

We talk about trucks here?

 

Yeah no kidding. We've got a bunch of core features on our device that straight up don't work. The little light on the front that indicates the unit is alive and working? Yep, haven't defined what turns it on, so its just off all the time.


This is the lunchtable thread, we talk about whatever. Unfortunately it is difficult to throw food on the internet.