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"Artisan" is covering a great deal of ground. At a previous job, probably fifteen years ago, we were replacing one bit of niche software (the company was gone, it was unsupported, and it had some very antiquated methods of ingestion, like faxes) with another, mostly similar bit of software. Continuity was desired. Different philosophies went into structuring the two databases, so it was like lifting a vast set of webs made by social spiders from one tree and placing it on another, just for the data import. I interviewed various people who were in different roles as to how they they used the old system. I checked the databases to see what they did not tell me about how they actually used the system. I scoured over the incoming data feed sources and made robust ingestion processes, validating and correcting and logging. Knowing the vagaries of software vendors, I wrote bits to detect changes made by vendors to the database structure, or at least the portions I cared about, and whine when those occurred. I grokked how the several different roles people had in interactions with the system led to differing needs and desires, incorporating as much of how things "used to work." The eventual juggernaut which resulted was something of a force of nature, a compilation of my best thoughts on my best days, outperforming me. It would tell you if a new type of data appeared which had not been announced, whom to ask about this data, and where to put it. It functioned for a decade of my oversight, occasionally murmuring that it wanted this or that, but without changes to the code. That was the artisinal bit to me, that it was carved to fit some very exacting spaces, such that you hardly knew it was present. Yes, it took extra time. Yeah, it was just me. But the fit was tight and the finish was smooth. (Naturally, some bright spark got a touch of the New Broom Syndrome and blew it and all of the documentation away after I left, I am told that there are continual complaints about the system now. Sadly, with even minimal prompting, the various tiny details arose from memory, prompted by the SMS messages.) |