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Ah, Weizenbaum's Eliza: I had a lot of fun in 1983 with getting my high-school level students debating whether Eliza, or any future app, could exhibit "intelligence" ... or, be helpful in a way equivalent to a human counsellor/psychiatrist/friend.
The anecdotes (fictions ?) about people reacting to Eliza as if they were engaged with a real person who "cared" include a Russian visiting MIT who started weeping during a session.
Weizenbaum's book "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation" is a book I'd like to re-read.
The first thing I'd ask WoeBot would be: "who's your daddy ?" 
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Hello Dave. How are you doing today Dave? I sense you are unhappy Dave. How can I help you Dave?
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I have a strong suspicion that at least half of the software technology and software designs that come out of large companies are simply an exercise in justifying the existence of an individual's or team's continued employment at said company. In other words, keep busy, even if it means developing things that are worse than useless**
** I specifically mean that - things that add nothing but extra complexity and red tape to software development - a process that should be as streamlined and simple as possible.
Software designs are dissertations. If you cannot defend them they are not worth researching and developing.
I'm all for a standards body requiring a rationale section on any new technology or design before it gets adopted as a standard or best practice.
Real programmers use butterflies
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You mean that we are becoming bureaucrats?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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I mean bureaucracy creeps into software, I guess.
Real programmers use butterflies
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we just want to keep our jobs and stay in our happy place.
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I forget who said this originally, but specifying the minimum necessary design to perform a task is much more difficult than specifying a more complex design. Perhaps the problem is that we simply don't have enough good designers?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I think that's part of it, but what spawned this OP of mine was something called the Source Generators Cookbook, wherein the Roslyn team decided to burden us with more boilerplate code dressed up as "best practices" that simply serves to make things complicated while limiting functionality.
I asked them for a rationale for their project on github and they closed the issue. Probably I could have been nicer about it, but microsoft frustrates me, because this is par for the course with them and I'm sick of it.
They're not the only ones.
They have plenty of good designers on staff. The problem is despite that, they keep having staff churning out nonsense like this and we're all worse off for it, because heaven forbid it ever get adopted by a significant number of people.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: hey have plenty of good designers on staff. The problem is despite that, they keep having staff churning out nonsense like this and we're all worse off for it, because heaven forbid it ever get adopted by a significant number of people.
Just a thought about this view.
We are developers and have a very minority of a viewpoint. Their business, like any business, is to make money. They cater to the crowds of cretins that post their pet photos on any and all social media and who's idea of a computer (should they have one) is that it's a wide-screen cell phone.
Case in point, perhaps, is the successful (in $ terms) of the apples thousand dollar iPhart and those who stand on line to get the latest every year. And those who me-too! it, etc. etc. etc.
Accept it - we're all just outliers.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I worked for a company, a while back that had a version of their software code named LOAP.
Lipstick On A Pig
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Absolutely this happens. It's unsurprising, since it's a case of not wanting to fire oneself and one's group when what you're doing no longer makes sense.
But standards bodies aren't the answer. Witness C#, which has all kinds of stuff for networking, and other useful things, versus C++, which keeps focusing on pedantic shite. It's the old joke about a committee designing a camel when the specifications called for a horse.
The problem you mention often occurs when large companies are run as monoliths. Products and budgets are centrally planned, so the exercise turns into a group against group struggle, each group trying to convince the senior nomenklatura that it deserves funding. When a thing that got funded no longer makes sense, there is little incentive to bring it to anyone's attention.
The best run companies primarily use a line of business model in which each silo (product) must sink or swim on its own. Your bonus, for example, depends far less on the company's overall performance than on your own silo's profit and loss. Each silo now has an incentive to focus on things that add value for its customers. One challenge is adding incubation projects to this model. It can be done by having a separate silo responsible for funding them, with the people running it being rewarded on the basis of how many incubation projects emerge as independent silos.
I've worked under both models and would always choose to work at the company run on a line of business model.
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My current company has a "build bridges not silos" mantra. It isn't followed very well since you can never get an answer from another team.
So I guess it's the best of both worlds.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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honey the codewitch wrote: and software designs
I've never seen a large company actually design software. Even a small company. Where are they? 
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ms does. they hire software architects
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: ms does. they hire software architects
I know the complexity and all the stuff... but have you seen what they are doing lately?   
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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You mean like MVVM?
The (MS) samples never use MVVM; except when demonstrating MVVM.
Ask someone to explain why they follow MVVM; they can't. Only that it's the thing to do.
Originally, it was about "visual designers" creating "plug in" views apart from the programming. Never happened. You still wind up with views and model/controllers that only work with each other; you just spend more time trying to interface them while settling for less (UI) functionality.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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That's why I don't use that model. I've never seen the rationale for it that satisfies me.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Years ago, a contractor next to me on an unrelated project was an MVVM proponent. He wrote a proof-of-concept using it and tried explaining to a few of us why it was so awesome. It was overly complex--massively form over function--and there was no way it could have been implemented in a reasonable period of time. So, yes it would have been awesome for him, as in cash in the bank, if they'd decided to continue with the project.
Gerry Schmitz wrote: You still wind up with views and model/controllers that only work with each other
It was this, yet the consultant didn't see it.
(Even the sales/marketing team, which needed the software, sensed total BS from this guy.)
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MVVM, another "nice to have" pattern. But, it isn't the end of the means. I have been working on a project that uses MVVM for several years and sadly to say that much of the business logic is in the VM part. Not good design. Primary should be a separation between the business/decision logic (service) layer and the presentation layer. MVVM can be used in the presentation layer to connect the view to the business layer. Even MVC or the old MFC style model-view plan would do. This way one can easily add any medium between the business and the presentation layers and have what ever front end they desire.
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Yes, well the moniker "best practice" is simply BS anyway, it's generally applied to bad practices, ignore it.
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What are you? New to the industry? No offense but yeah, it happens all the time. Remember, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them."
In the 40 years I've spent in engineering (I don't do IT, those are fighting words), I have seen more than a few white elephants to be worshiped. People hinge their careers on projects. Senior management is goaled on projects, not pure design or software design. There heads would explode if that was part of the thing.
What you are looking at is a management problem.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I'm not new. I'm just commenting on something I noticed early on. Just because I bring it up now doesn't mean it's the first time it occurred to me.
Real programmers use butterflies
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You are so right. I have been working in the 'software' industry in the Bay Area for 25 plus years. Its all about which group gets how much from the budget and how soon can you make the sales folks happy with a release yesterday with all kinds of 'look how cool' features!
Anyone who claims that they have designed very well and their coding is as per the design and its great, etc does not know what they are talking about. No software ever gets built exactly as designed, no code is ever 'compliant' as per the zillion design paradigms like SOLID, Gang of Four, DDD, TDD, {insert any other fancy new design paradigm}
And yes, developers, development managers, development VPs all need to keep their relevance important to the organization to continue getting paid.
I stopped being a software idealist long ago.
A lot of my clients like to get onto the latest 'fad' out there.
If my client wants all functional style code, great here it is!
If they want all OOPs and pure MVC code, great here it is!
If you want the latest javascript framework 'wow how cool' type spaghetti code with HTML, JS, etc all mixed in a file - well here it is!
Just approve my timesheet and pay me. I don't care if the code I write passes the Gang of Four, SOLID, blah blah benchmarks! As long as my client's software development head honcho is happy with my work and results, that's all I care for.
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I think you are running up against the difference between custom built corporate software (damn can't think of the correct word for that) that needs to service the requirements of only 1 company and commercial software that services an industry.
The level of complexity and crap that makes it into commercial software is horrifying once the sales department get hold of it.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: custom built corporate software (damn can't think of the correct word for that)
Bespoke?
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