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Incoherent argument. What was the point? I've read a few of this person's posts and after reading them I'm always left with the feeling that they must be terrible to work with.
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This is a useless argument that is there just to boost the author Adds income.
If one is a bad professional he shouldn't be doing it, period!
But life isn't as simple as this and we all know how it goes and we have to live with it.
Everyone at least once looked at he's own code some months later and thought:
"S**t! What was I thinking when I wrote this?!"
Architects
Here we're speaking about developers, but these are far from being the one that really weight on bad software at the end.
For me, bad Architects (or the lack of a defined architecture) can damage much more than a bad developer.
On top of the damage, a bad architecture is much harder to rollback than just a piece of bad written code.
Project Leadership
Bad of lack of project leadership leads to bad developers "perception".
You might be a good developer but if you don't have the right info to work with you might end up writing bad code and not even knowing it.
Frameworks
There's a lot to say about this but bottom line is that Frameworks are never the problem.
In fact they help to encapsulate logic that most of the time we would end up writing anyway so what's the problem?
The problem is the same as Googling and Copy/Paste. Using them blindly, without caring about what they really do underneath.
Of course, at the end it's easy to blame who actually stroke the keys and code the damn mess, but I've seen much more crappy software than crappy developers and this should mean something...
Cheers!
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AlexCode wrote: Frameworks are never the problem.
I would beg to differ but MFC doesn't provide a way to do that with making a fool of yourself. 
AlexCode wrote: Using them blindly, without caring about what they really do underneath.
Agree 100% but of course this can only be solved if the framework itself is transparent, open source and well documented.
I do framework development because it's hard and therefore a good way to learn. 10 years and I'm still learning exactly how hard it is. 
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Based on this article, I'd say bad writers shouldn't use blog engines.
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Framework that can be used only by expert developers is probably not so good
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The same goes for API's... 
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Too much judgemental boasting by this piece of blogger.
Or maybe he just wants to let everyone know that he knows about validation?
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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No, he really just wants the Adds income...
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He should hit a nail on his head, this is a useless rant and on top of that incoherent.
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Bad Developers Should NOT develop, in any case
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At TechEd North America Microsoft announced a wave of products and services that will help customers embrace the “enterprise cloud era.” The next version of theirdata platform – SQL Server 2014 – is a key part of the day’s news. Designed and developed with our cloud-first principles in mind, it delivers built-in in-memory capabilities, new hybrid cloud scenarios and enables even faster data insights.
SQL Server 2014
Deependra
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It's the bane of most programmers' lives - an unhandled exception causes your application or webapp to crash, an ugly dialog gets displayed to the user, and they come complaining to you. Then, somehow, you need to figure out what went wrong.... However, it's good that the program crashed. Or, more precisely, it is correct behaviour. An unhandled exception in your application means that, somewhere in your code, there is an assumption that you made that is actually invalid. Fail early, fail often... fail spectacularly if that's what it takes to learn.
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I have now worked at a bunch of companies, and consulted for quote a few. I have looked at some pretty horrible code. Every company I visit with say the same thing: Yeah, but our code really sucks. It does not suck more than other code I have seen. It usually sucks about as much. Do a thought experiment: Of the ugly code you’ve seen,: when was it written? How long has it been alive? Most of the time, I have seen ugly code that started a good few years ago. Your hacky code is now a big business. Now you can make it pretty.
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Nope, ugly code means your big successful company is about to miss the 'next big thing' or be so late to the party it costs eye watering ammounts of money to get in. If you're big and successful now you've got about 5 minutes to start doing it properly or you won't be big and successful any more. Yes you invested everything you had in that pile of hacks and it made you your first million. It won't make you your second million even if you invest everything you've now got in it. Sit down with an empty computer, take a deep breath, smell the ![Java | [Coffee]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/coffee.gif) , remember everything you learned last time and start again.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Matthew Faithfull wrote: Sit down with an empty computer, take a deep breath, smell the [Coffee] , remember
everything you learned last time and start again.
A company selling an ERP package named BPCS did exactly that.
It was about a $400 million company, if memory serves me right.
BPCS ran on the IBM AS/400.
They took the advice of programmers/consultants or whatever and decided to rewrite the whole thing under Unix.
The company went belly up a few years later.
Programmers will tell you that RPG is a bad language, that the future belongs to C, C++, Java or C++11.
Now they are telling you that the future belongs to Scala, Haskell, Clojure, or PHP, HTML 5, etc.
They all had a future that lasted 5-10 years. But for the power of stupid people in large numbers, these languages would not have lived one year.
Write a stable system that does its job well. You can continue using the software forever.
You don't believe me? Ask the Wall Street stock brokerages what language their trade accounting software is written in.
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For them to have gone belly up assuming no overriding external factors several thing were very likely happening.
Their revenue from the old system was no longer great enough after a few years to sustain development of the new system which implies the old system was dying on its feet and or they were too late starting their new development.
If after several years they didn't have a system that worked on Unix and could make money then either they weren't doing it right or the product itself no longer had a market.
Perhaps they didn't recognize the difference in expectation levels between AS400 users and Unix users or perhaps things had already moved on so far they should have been targetting Android with a package of that scale instead
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Matthew Faithfull wrote: For them to have gone belly up assuming no overriding external factors several
thing were very likely happening.
Their revenue from the old system was no
longer great enough after a few years to sustain development of the new system
which implies the old system was dying on its feet and or they were too late
starting their new development.
If after several years they didn't have a
system that worked on Unix and could make money then either they weren't doing
it right or the product itself no longer had a market.
None of your assumptions is correct.
They were selling a very well respected ERP system and had hundreds of customers.
Total incompetence of the new product development team is what did them in. That, plus the arrogance that writing in C under Unix is the Holy Grail. Those idiots were being kept on the payroll by the revenue generated by the original RPG-based software.
By the way, I used software developed in 1983 on a System/38 written in RPG. That software could handle multiple currencies. Not Oracle ERP in 1989 when it was being touted as the Unix alternative.
Matthew Faithfull wrote: Perhaps they didn't recognize the difference in expectation levels between AS400
users and Unix users
Quite possibly.
My colleague had this to say about Unix systems engineers: "Their idea of service is turning the computer on at 9 am and turning it off at 5 pm."
On the other hand, the IBM AS/400 constantly runs self-tests and automatically reports potential failures directly to the factory, going so far as to place orders for replacement parts if the system is under maintenance by IBM. The parts are delivered to the local Customer (Service) Engineer with instructions as to which customer is supposed to have the parts installed.
Not bad for a machine put into service in 1987.
It also always re-uses he space used by deleted records so there is almost no need to reorganize (unload-reload) the database.
Any Unix box does that today?
In fact, there is no role for a Database Administrator (DBA) in an AS/400 shop.
Can you say that about Oracle, SQLServer, Ingres, Postgres, Informix, etc?
Before you diss any computer/OS/database, do a bit of work finding out its capabilities.
But then, if you get brainwashed in college, there is no hope for you.
modified 5-Jun-13 14:30pm.
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Vivic wrote: Total incompetence of the new product development team is what did them in.
Yes. As I said they weren't doing the Unix development right and the revenue from their existing product, however wonderful, was not enough to sustain that development long enough to produce a viable product probably because they weren't doing it right.
It wasn't really about what language was used however much you'd like it to be or they thought it was. It was, as you said, about incompetence.
It's perfectly possible to create a great database and a fantastic ERP system in C even on Unix. The fact that no one seems to have done so yet is a tragedy for sure but that doesn't mean it cannot be done.
It might mean that it isn't a commercially viable thing to do. Simply not valuable enough for the effort it would take but that is another question and one they should have asked before they began such a project.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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I agree... and disagree. I think people far too frequently try to apply one set of rules to everything and, like most things in life where that one-rule attempt is made, that doesn't work very well. You are absolutely right that some companies rest on their laurels and don't take the opportunity to revisit their product (in whatever form) to prepare for the next stage in growth or evolution. However, it's also possible to become so obsessed with rewriting a software product in [pick the trendy platform of choice at the given moment] that you end up living in the past instead of actually planning for the future.
Personally I believe we have ALL written bad code at some point (whether we want to admit it or not). But we have also all (at least the more experienced devs in the forum) written code that was "good enough for the time" - platforms, languages, operating systems, databases, transports all change and all businesses have to deal with deadlines, budgets, competition, available technology and other factors such that we do the best with the tools and time that we have. That's not to say that there are those that don't have horribly written bloatware on platforms they should have never considered in the first case, but I just don't think it's safe to apply a single all-encompassing solution without knowing the details of the situation.
The main underlying factor in considering a rewrite is to make sure that the reasons for the rewrite have solid business foundations - not just the technological drive to build it again.
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I agree but I wan't even necessarily talking about a rewrite of the same product.
Part of my point is that if you want to remain succesful you have to move on and in authoring software as in authoring books or movies that doesn't mean reediting your last film again and again it means starting again, with everything you learned up till now and creating something new. Whether it is the next film in a series (where you can reuse the costumes), the next platform for your application or a completely new book is a matter of what will work best in your circumstances.
To put it another way keeping a film franchise going for a time may be reasonable but trying to endlessly rerelease the same film would be a disaster. I think too many software companies fall into this trap and they often do so because the software they started out developing was done so badly from a technical point of view it's difficult to reuse anything from it or transfer the technology to a different scenario.
It always looks too expensive to start again with a blank sheet but I think the 'we did it once we can do it again' attitude that tends to be more prevalent in the US is very often what's needed and one reason along with working better in teams why they still lead the world in successful large scale software.
The key is perhaps in recognizing that part of the value gained from developing a succesful product is the experience of doing so and the best way to realize that value is develop another one. It also keeps the technical people interested so they don't leave.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Agree 110%.
Relating to a film franchise is a pretty good comparison (from a theoretical standpoint at least) - can you say "Hangover III"! Very little coming out of Hollywood these days is original.
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"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
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Right does not mean pretty. If it works, it works. The problem with companies that wrote ugly code that worked is that they did not start planning for upgrades early enough and waited too long to rewrite things. The ugly codes that lasted are the ones where updates happen once a decade or so. Companies need to assess how long their code is expected to stay running and start refactoring and improving it midway through. Sadly, those that do go belly-up still make a lot of money for their upper-management, but customers and employees be damned.
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"Right" includes maintainability.
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I’ve written a lot of DirectX code and I’ve written about DirectX extensively. I’ve even produced online training courses on DirectX. It really isn’t as hard as some developers make it out to be. There’s definitely a learning curve, but once you get over that, it’s not hard to understand how and why DirectX works the way it does. Still, I’ll admit that the DirectX family of APIs could be easier to use. A few nights ago, I decided to remedy this. I stayed up all night and wrote a little header file.... A challenge to all of the “C++ is hard” or “DirectX is hard” arguments.
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