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Been there. 
Make sure you keep track on everything written, because if the sh*t hits the fan it's gonna be your fault.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Any organization is like a tree full of monkeys. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.
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At this point, if I were you, I would introduce your management to the project triangle. This is a triangle that balances Scope, Cost and Time to deliver. In other words, if one of those items changes, then the other two parts have to be adjusted to compensate - so, the scope of your application has changed, then the time to deliver changes as does the cost. This is project management 101, and if they don't understand this, they need to be pushed.
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Speak to them in language they understand. COST, COST, COST, COST, COST.....
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Maybe just be honest and blunt with them. Say you will do it, but it isn't nearly the same, and there is no guarantee it will be done in a month. And if they pressure you for overtime, they will be paying you more, because of their failure to do their job properly.
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I rarely explain any of the refactoring or maintenance that I have to do to keep a code base sane. No matter how you do it, it's just going to sound over complicated and excessive to them.
So, figure out how to change the architecture and keep the system sane, and do that, and it takes as long as it takes.
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Andy Brummer wrote: So, figure out how to change the architecture and keep the system sane, and do that, and it takes as long as it takes
That's where I'm at with it.
I've been watching plural sight videos for an upcoming project most of the morning so that I could think about this one. I wasn't going to start coding until I had a solution that was not a hack. I've come up with something that is going to fit nicely into the program, and shouldn't take too long for me to put in place.
Andy Brummer wrote: I rarely explain any of the refactoring or maintenance that I have to do to keep a code base sane. No matter how you do it, it's just going to sound over complicated and excessive to them.
I'm in an interesting position with that here. The boss and one of the processors were programmers. They are from an old script hack breed though. They don't get why an object is different than a code module, they don't know what design patterns are or how they are useful, and they don't see the need to plan before you start coding. So I end up having to explain myself, but they don't understand in the end anyway.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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loctrice wrote: I've come up with something that is going to fit nicely into the program, and shouldn't take too long for me to put in place.
See! They told you so! You just had to think harder!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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loctrice wrote: I'm in an interesting position with that here. The boss and one of the processors were programmers. They are from an old script hack breed though. They don't get why an object is different than a code module, they don't know what design patterns are or how they are useful, and they don't see the need to plan before you start coding. So I end up having to explain myself, but they don't understand in the end anyway.
That's a shame, it's really helpful to have someone to bounce design decisions off of. Though, at least you can do the opposite of what they suggest. 
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It's situations like this that sometimes bring out the best in us! Sounds like you know what you are doing. Good luck! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Yeah, I figured out a good way to do it. I just had to complain about it first.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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If it looks like an elephant...
Make it look like a giraffe, but don't make it stop being an elephant -- and make sure that it can do what beavers, snakes, and geese do.
Tuesday OK?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I had read/heard somewhere (Grady Booch?) - "You have a twenty storey building with a basement floor; the building is occupied, has offices, residences, people living and working in it. Now, they want you to add a couple more basements under the existing basement."
This is similar to what they want you to do, isn't it?
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Yeah, that sounds pretty close.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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Yeah but that's easy - all you have to do is take stuff away...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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"Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent." Baltasar Gracián Recommended reading:
Full-text of all available at Project Gutenberg, except for Gracian's book.
"The Prince" Nicolo Machiavelli
"The Art of Worldly Wisdom" Baltasar Gracián [^]
"The Art of War" Sun Tzu
"The Art of War" Carl von Clausewitz
"Meditations" Marcus Aurelius
« There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad. » Salvador Dali
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It's funny. (Funny "uh oh", not to be confused with "funny ha ha", see The Animaniacs for more.)
I understand that "Business doesn't understand technology", having been doing this professionally for closer to 30 than 20 years.
But it is continually aMAZING to me how PERFECTLY they have the sign bit switched between "easy" and "impossible".
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Sounds like it might be worth building a plugin framework into your original project? Then you could leave that code clean and do the dirty stuff in each custom plugin
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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That happened with a large project of mine; I designed and built a web based dynamic database front end that allowed rapid access to any SQL database on our system and did a ton of other important in house functions; then we got a new marketing guy who decided he couldn't sell it as it was and wanted a new version that completely changed the premise of the original so I had to do six months of rewrites.
He couldn't or wouldn't understand why it took so long to make such "small" changes, and the pressure was to make them very fast as he was selling this promised software to clients; the result was a Frankenstein's monster which was a nightmare to debug and make changes to. The kicker was that nobody actually wanted this new hybrid product and it was canned 6 months later.
Everyone in the office still uses the original version every day.
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What you're starting with: Starting structure[^]
What they think you can build: Desired result[^]
The only good thing is that the starting structure already has plenty of what will be in the final result.
Software Zen: delete this;
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When I was doing computer controlled conveyor systems, the phrase that struck terror in my heart was, "It's just like (fill in the blank)."
Yeah, only if you ingest a lot of acid and turn the blueprint sideways and upside down.
They once flew me halfway across the continent to view a system to prepare for a sales presentation on the other half. They picked me up at the airport for the 20 minute drive to the client's site and gave me the blueprints to look over. Aside from the paper they were printed on, there was no similarity. Didn't help the new design was unworkable to boot.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Is this new and different thing in addition to the original file checking?
If so, without knowing anything about the architecture, I'd be inclined to say if this new operation is really that different from the original, then just make a totally different set of code to handle that new job, but package it up in the same project.
Make an initial entry point that just takes in a file and an operation to perform, and it just sends the file to the existing code or the new code, depending on the operation.
You can add any number of different operations that are arbitrarily different from each other using separate sets of code.
Being web-based, you can just have different web pages for different operations.
Greg Hall
greghall@bantling.me
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The program was written for basic file integrity. Like, do all the column headers match and do all the required fields have data all the way through. That was all it was intended for, so the processor got an email when a file was accepted and then did his/her job.
The problem is now they are wanting to add persistence. Like is all the data in the same order as the previous load(s), and have we already processed this file into our (completely separate) data system. Which is part of two other planned projects, but don't fit in here.
I was using a factory to get an object, per client, that implemented the command pattern for the rulesets. The list of command objects was injected via another factory. Made things pretty simple. Those objects all just took in a list of the data.
My frustration also has to do with the fact that later with another planned project, I'll have to reimplement this properly (which is how you were talking about another set of code).
The idea is that we will automatically process these files as well,but they are getting impatient and just wanting things hacked onto this project because it will take time to develop the other two pieces.
If it interests you, I just changed the top level command object that comes back from the factory to be a container object, and take a second argument containing the user data needed for previous lookups. It breaks my idea of clean code because a) it no longer implements the uniform command pattern, and b) the top level objects now take an argument that aren't used by the other implementations.
I decided I would leave it the way it was, because a) We're going to do the next step soon and it will make this code irrelivant and b) without more instances I don't see a clear/clean way to refactor it.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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Does anyone else have testers at their company that talk about testing and complain about the dev cycle more than they actually test? I swear, 75-80% of the time I walk over to the testers, they aren't actually testing anything. 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Colin Mullikin wrote: Does anyone else have testers at their company
No, loads of testes though.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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