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First make it work
Then make it work *fast*
Then find out why it doesn't work anymore
Then ask for an actual test budget/timeline for projects.
Then get blown off.
Then ask a coworker to look at the code
Then hack it to work
Then make it work with a new feature
Then make management happy until the customers start calling because it blew things up.
Then ask (again) for an actual test budget/timeline for projects.
Then make it tested.
Then make it work
or something like that.
(cowboy coding in the dotcom boom 1990s trying to serve way more pages than servers were worth in those days and on impossible timelines)
I do like that companies I worked for started realizing that actual development lifecycle and testing was important, though sometimes it took some failed projects.
those were the salad days.
I'm sure the above has many variations, and everyone can come up with one. We all have war stories. It's what makes it fun.
Real programmers use butterflies
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This variant happens a lot:
- Make a super techy proof-of-concept, fast as Elephant!
- Made it. [Not me personally but I saw it happen.]
- They sold it.
- They sold it again and again and...
- Now add a bunch of features!
- Yihaa!
- Why the Elephant is that so hard? Who the Elephant wrote this pile???
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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That's actually pretty good result, considering it made it through the first sales cycle. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Well I was a bit inaccurate there. It was sold before development and paid on delivery.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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You must be with the advanced team.
- Discuss a feature in a meeting.
- Decide it is feasible.
- Manager tells the sales team.
- Submit a budget and time frame for development.
- Sales team sell the feature as completed.
- Manager wants to know why the feature has not been completed.
- Ask management for budget approval.
- Sales manager goes ballistic because he has a pissed off rep and customer.
... it goes on and on and never gets better!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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It's 2000, the peak of the telecom bubble. An all-hands meeting, maybe 250 people in attendance. My boss, the VP of Engineering, is Sri Lankan. Best boss ever. No nonsense, and no tolerance for corporate politics. Calls stuff like that boo-sh*t because Tamil lacks the ll sound in bull. But only in his staff meetings.
He gets up to speak and laments how hard it is to find qualified developers. He describes the people coming in for interviews, saying "We have lots of Joe Blows, but no Joe Blow jobs." Laughter, but probably a lot more than he expected.
Totally innocent. He would have been absolutely mortified if he'd realized the double entendre. Today, some snowflake would have gone whining to HR, and his job might be in jeopardy. Back then, no big deal.
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At COMDEX in 2000 some coworkers (with our CEO) threw burning pizza boxes out the window of their hotel. I had nothing to do with that particular incident of debauchery, but there are others that happened during those couple of weeks that I won't mention outside of vegas. I was however, in the car when said CEO drove the rental car up a curb and blew out the tire, he drove it back on the rim and they gave him an SUV instead.  Vegas is full of enablers/ Fun times.
Edited to make SFW. Apologies
Real programmers use butterflies
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Rental cars. 
I lost the keys to our rental car in 1986 while glacier trekking on Galdhøpiggen in Norway. I had foolishly put them in my pocket, and they must have fallen out when I sat down somewhere.
So I called the NAF (Norwegian Automobile Assocation) and explained the problem. They would send a guy out first thing Monday morning. It's now Friday at 5pm, and I explained that our flight left Oslo, many hours away, on Sunday.
OK, they'd send someone out in the morning. But this was a little different. He had to break into our car, take apart the steering wheel, and bash the ignition lock into submission. Something that looked like a potentiometer was left hanging from the steering wheel, and the car had to be started with a screwdriver.
When I dropped off the car at the Oslo airport and the check-in lady asked for the keys, I handed her the screwdriver. I told them to charge my credit card for the repairs, but they never did.
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Greg Utas wrote: I told them to charge my credit card for the repairs, but they never did.
Well that was thoughtful.
I'm glad you made it out okay.
Real programmers use butterflies
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First make it.
Then make it work. 
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I'm guessing it's still like that in a lot of places.
Except that very few now care about making it fast (or not a memory pig). Our customers used to raise hell if the system's capacity degraded by more than ~2% in a major release, which was naturally the result of their feature demands.
Nowadays, "stateless" programming is all the rage. Good Lord, we would have been out of business yesterday.
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Oh yeah, make it fast stopped being a rule back when pentium 4s stopped being a thing. =P
But this was back when we were trying to host com+ apps on an NT4 box and serve by taking over Asp's role. My first implementation served about 4 pages per second of our test website.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Where I work, cowboy coding is the rule. Stuff always needs to be done yesterday.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I was sometimes in environments like that too. Eventually it gets seen as just another "Wolf!" story, particularly when others (executives, sales) aren't held to account for their failures to deliver.
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Not sure what he needs. But wherever he needs it today, is it not on the surface of planet Earth.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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0x01AA wrote: I wouldn't say his voice, his engagement has gotten worse. But then why does he need all these legs and tits and asses now
He is already dead so I'm afraid he doesn't need anything now... 
Leaving the Woodstock magic/history appart, the second is a much better show than the first one.
And let's see... this is not new by any means: 1980 Joe Cocker[^]...
Girls & music have been there since the first day.
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I've been out of the field for a decade, and I think it grew up while I was away.
I don't know, because I don't work in it directly anymore, but I get little impressions here and there, everything from friends, to the ads I see on code project, to the types of developers I run into these days, it seems like the industry is more straight-laced than it was in the 90's and early aughts.
Like, me, I stand the hell out wherever I'm at, whether I mean to or not. I'm very eccentric (technically actually quite mad), and it used to be almost a selling point in the field. Now I think it would be a red flag to a lot of potential employers, like it is in a "real job"
So for you breadwinners and wageslaves in the field who have been in it for awhile, is this impression anywhere near accurate, or is the industry still a sideshow of geeks *and* freaks?
Real programmers use butterflies
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"Eccentricity" isn't a positive trait so it's not something companies particularly look for. Especially big ones and ones with HR departments as they have to think about team cohesion and they tend to not want people who don't "fit". Saying that, though, it's a creative industry and I always say that if you want to work with creative people you're going to have to put up with a little crazy, but most people I run into in the industry are fairly normal with a smattering of the occasional "character".
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I'm not saying it's something employers seek out or ever have. I'm more talking about tolerance for it, but I'll defer here since I've been out of the field, like I said.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Some forms are more tolerated than others...someone might wear a Pokemon backpack to work even though they are 40, someone else might declare to all "OMG I'm so eccentric, me!"
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not me, i'm just visibly weird. I dress funny, apparently, and i am quite literally schizo which lends itself to seeming "off" to people. Plus I'm genderweird.
Always have been. It's just who I am.
Real programmers use butterflies
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As someone who grew up when society was still quite straightlaced (1950s), I don't find your description of yourself at all weird. given the conversations and publicity about gender these days I assume that all people under 50 take it in their stride. As to "dressing funny", who has the right to determine how anyone should dress?
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: who has the right to determine how anyone should dress?
Your employer
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Most software engineers work in small startups, in large corporations, or in academia. As always, eccentricity is tolerated in small companies (especially if one is a founder) or in academia (if one is also brilliant), but is discouraged in large companies. The only difference is the mix - a larger proportion of software engineers work in large companies.
In short, the industry has (partly) grown up. 
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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