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by nobleach
2216 days ago
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I like that Gary Bernhardt tweets every once in awhile something along the lines of "we have no actual evidence that any software methodology actually leads to better, less buggy software". We have people falling all over themselves to sing the praises of XP, TDD, Agile/Scrum/etc, and yet, we can't show software actually getting any better. I've been around long enough now to see these trends rise and fall. One thing remains constant though. Humans make errors. Humans try to find better ways to fix these errors (faster, more effectively). Humans like trying to notice patterns. It's a good thing. But trying to say any one of those patterns is more effective than another, is a hard sell. The result is always the same. The ONE lesson I wish all young developers could learn early: You will learn new information that will cause you to question yesterday's "best practices". So quit holding on to what you know now as the "one true way". Be willing to learn from people you consider "old and irrelevant"... they may actually know something. |
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> We have people falling all over themselves to sing the praises of XP, TDD, Agile/Scrum/etc, and yet, we can't show software actually getting any better.
Software is absolutely better today than it was in the 80s and 90s. I used to have to reboot my computer 2 or 3 times a day due to unrecoverable crashes and taught myself to constantly save work after every minor change. Now my computer stays up for weeks to months at a time only being rebooted to install updates occasionally. Documents are often autosaved, and I don't even need to save anything when I quit an app. The next time I launch it's all there.
I agree that we may not be able to measure that any given methodology is better than any other one, but we've made significant progress along the way. Better tooling, like static analyzers and profilers have helped, too. I do think automated testing can be shown to improve things when used appropriately. (The drive for 100% test coverage seems fanatical to me, though.)