Re: pl/sql code maintenance

Jim Kennedy (kennedy-down_with_spammers_at_attbi.com) wrote:
: Reminds me of 3 stories.

There are two sides to everything, and a few side thoughts comes to mind

: One company hadn't finished the software so they sent out the floppies
: anyway and purposely damaged the first disk. (thereby making it impossible
: to install. We are talking a long time ago when CDs did not exist or not in
: any quantity.)
: Meanwhile they finished the program and when people complained to support ,
: support apologized , blamed the US postal service and said they would send
: out a replacement disk. Two weeks later when the program was finished they
: sent out the replacement disk. They bought themselves about a month with
: this method.

Developers and also software companies are often under pressure to release on schedule. However code should be released when it works (or at least works better than what is currently in use with essential requirements in place).

This could also be viewed as a neat trick to provide working code in spite of pressure (possibly from both customers and mangement) to release buggy code sooner. Not saying it's right, but in the long run the customer may have been better off.

: Another company (made tape backup software) would put in wait states in
: patches so things would take longer and longer to backup. Then they would
: market the next major upgrade as a speed improvement. (which you had to buy
: to get)

(no other side to this story!)

: A large computer company (known by three letters), had a requirement to have
: a timesharing system where the performance of a benchmark would be the same
: for 1 user or if all 30 users were on the system at the same time.
: Engineering met this marketing requirement. They put in wait states in
: inverse proportion to the number of users.

This one sounds like a classic "dilbert".

The key words here are "marketing requirement". The customer or management insists on impossible requirements and so the technical people find ways to keep them happy. Received on Sun Dec 29 2002 - 20:31:42 CST