Engineering Ardor
“Science is the study of what is. Engineering builds what will be.” — Theodore von Karman

Archive for May, 2007

The Wrong Tool for Every Job

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

I spent several of my last few days on my last job tidying up design documentation, javadoc, and header comments before leaving. Some parts of the header comment template were useless. How many hours was it worth to have me go through and label each file with its file name, author, and creation date? I doubt that in the year 3007, the historians of that time will be browsing millenium-old source code header comments to gain insight into our life and times. And if I’m wrong, they’ll probably do what we do now and check the repository change history. As it happens, a good CM system will keep track of who checked something in and when. Most astonishing of all, it’s quite easy to figure out the file name by… I dunno… looking at the name of the file on the file system? Believe me, I’m all for sensibly applied engineering rigor, but sometimes the wrong tool for the job just ought to be put back in the tool box.

There He Was… Gone

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

I’ve switched jobs again. Actually, I went back to my previous employer. That in and of itself is of no use to you, so I’ll skip over it. There are, however, some lessons from my now ex-employer that are worth learning if you want to retain your employees, or I suppose, if you want to drive them away in droves.
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