I’ve linked this before, but I feel like this might resonate with you: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Yeah a bridge has a plan that it’s built and verified against. It’s the picture book waterfall implementation. The software industry has moved away from this approach because software is not like bridges.

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KronisLV 4 days ago | parent [-]

> It’s the picture book waterfall implementation.

One of my better experiences with software development was actually with something waterfall-adjacent. The people I was developing software for produced a 50 page spec ahead of any code being written.

That let me get a complete picture of the business domain. That let me point out parts of the spec that were just wrong in regards to the domain model and also things that could be simplified. Implementation became way more straightforwards and I still opted for a more iterative approach than just one deliverable at the end. About 75% of the spec got build and 25% was found to be not necessary, it was a massive success - on time and with fewer bugs than your typical 2 week "we don't know the big picture" slop that's easy to get into with indecisive clients.

Obviously it wasn't "proper" waterfall and it also didn't try to do a bunch of "agile" Scrum ceremonies but borrowed whatever I found useful. Getting a complete spec of the business needs and domain and desired functionality (especially one without prescriptive bullshit like pixel perfect wireframes and API docs written by people that won't write the API) was really good.

	▲	skydhash 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you can't get a complete spec, it's better start with something small that you can get detailed info on, and then iterate upon that. It will involve refactoring, but that is better than badly designing the whole thing from the get go.

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sfn42 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I enjoyed that but honestly it kind of doesn't really resonate. Because it's like "This stuff is really complicated and nobody knows how anything works etc and that's why everything is shit".

I'm talking about simple stuff that people just can't do right. Not complex stuff. Like imagine some perfect little example code on the react docs or whatever, good code. Exemplary code. Trivial code that does a simple little thing. Now imagine some idiot wrote code to do exactly the same thing but made it 8 times longer and incredibly convoluted for absolutely no reason and that's basically what most "developers" do. Everyone's a bunch of stupid amateurs who can't do simple stuff right, that's my problem. It's not understandable, it's not justifiable, it's not trading off quality for speed. It's stupidity, ignorance and lazyness.

That's why we have coding interviews that are basically "write fizzbuzz while we watch" and when I solve their trivial task easily everyone acts like I'm Jesus because most of my peers can't fucking code. Like literally I have colleagues with years of experience who are barely at a first year CS level. They don't know the basics of the language they've been working with for years. They're amateurs.

	▲	KronisLV 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Then it’s quite possible that you’re working in an environment that naturally leads to people like that getting hired. If that’s something you see repeatedly, then the environment isn’t a good fit for you and you aren’t a good fit for it. So you’d be better served by finding a place where the standards are as high as you want, from the very first moment in the hiring process. For example, Oxide Computers has a really interesting approach https://oxide.computer/careers Obviously that’s easier said than done but there are quite a few orgs out there like that. If everyone around you doesn’t care about something or can’t do it, it’s probably a systemic problem with the environment.