Debunking the duct tape programmer

http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/debunking-the-duct-tape-programmer/

by 8ren • 16 years ago

16 19 16 years ago

jeffreypalermo.com

gaius4• 16 years ago

never take software advice from a bug tracking system salesman

Beautiful.

dirtyaura• 16 years ago

Spolsky seems to be a less fashionable idol than he was when I started to become interested in startups. In the context of programming AND startups, his opinions have much more weight to me than XP proponents'.

Joel has created a successful company that is apparently fun to work in, have shipped several working and commercially successful products and made a service for human-kind by designing and successfully launching programming Q&A site that doesn't suck. Plus his writings inspired a generation of programmers to start companies, just like PG's writings did later.

Contrast this with Extreme Programming that OP embraces as a third option compared to duct tape programming vs analysis-paralysis. I was very excited about XP when I was young and inexperienced programmer, but nowadays XP sounds much more snake-oil salesmanship to me than Joel's opinions. Did original XP gang work in startup like environments, or were they actually solving problems (payroll systems) that they and many others had already solved? And Kent Beck seems to be still working on jUnit (and trying to find a way to monetize it), not shipping new products.

My kudos goes to Joel and duct tape programmers around the world.

barrkel• 16 years ago

Let us never forget that the project XP originated with, Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, never actually shipped.

gaius4• 16 years ago

Joel seems to talk a lot of sense but this is tempered for me by two things. 1) no-one I know uses any of his products and 2) I have a hard time believing he really is able to attract the top talent to work on a project management tool written in VB.

Luyt• 16 years ago

I immediately found the quote "never take software advice from a bug tracking system salesman" an ad-hominem attack. It doesn't address at all why the advice would be bad.

mhp3• 16 years ago

I imagine he's trying to suggest it is in Joel's best interest for people to have buggy code so he can sell more bug tracking software. It doesn't sound like a very good argument, but I think it's supposed to be a joke.

talvisota2• 16 years ago

It is not an attack towards person. It simply points that a guy selling bug tracking system makes his living from people having bugs in their software.

slantyyz3• 16 years ago

Why is this a valid rebuttal?

I don't agree with everything Joel says, and I definitely find the StackExchange marketing approach flawed at best, but I've been using Fogbugz for quite some time, and it is far from being horrible software. I would take it over JIRA any day.

Yes, Joel is an Internet brand. His blog entries are designed to get eyeballs by being opinionated. But he does have a legitimate development background. You can't dismiss his opinion outright because he sells bug tracking software.

sqrt17• 16 years ago

The article misses the point that Spolsky makes: some people are smart enough that they can foresee where the duct tape can be applied (and, by extension, where it would be catastrophic to do so).

This is, of course, a far cry from the person who does everything with duct tape, because it's simpler to do so. And it's also a far cry from the person who always follows his/her standard approach, because nobody ever got fired for [using the safe-but-costly approach].

In essence, the duct tape programmer has a safety margin between the smartest he could do, and what he actually does, and uses this safety margin (1) to make the software actually work, because he can avoid stupid errors, and debug the subtle issues that come up, and (2) to make the software ship on time. Not using your most-advanced-yet-poorly-understood techniques does not mean you'd stick to the stone age approach, but that you're perfectly fine with using stone age tools in addition to the fancy-schmancy newfangled stuff where it makes sense.

I, for one, won't Party with Palermo on this. I'm more cautious of people making their money with agile training than with people selling bug tracking systems.

talvisota2• 16 years ago

I agree with you, but the point is damn well hidden behind one of the crappiest analogies of all time: using duct tape is an indication that you're great engineer - but only if you are one of the naturally talented "pretty boys" who know what they're doing.

terra_t• 16 years ago

"Analysis Paralysis" often has a root cause: incompetence.

A pal of mine was a consultant for a logistics company serving a large country that's north of the U.S. This company was developing a package tracking system in Java, back around 2000 or so, when "Java" was often a synonym for "Project Failure."

Now, when the whole thing started, I told him that I could knock off a prototype in a week in PHP. Nope, these guys decided to spend five months developing a framework for their application, and then they were going to spend the next month developing the actual app.

Well, six months later, I hear that the predictable outcome had happened: management was shocked to discover that the application took 30 seconds to serve up a page view.

My pal sent me a copy of the app and it was an absolute rat's nest: the kind of project where you use 1500 lines of code to say what you could say in 15. The sheer bulk of the code made it difficult to maintain: and it had poor performance written into it's DNA. The real problem was that this wan an IBM shop that was developing its first webapp, developing its first Java app and... nobody knew what they were doing.

-----

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with front-loading your design and analysis work... IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! In the hands of people who have a holistic view of the application and toolset it's based on, front-loading is a beautiful tool that can make implementation and testing a breeze.

However, because it delays feedback, prolonged analysis doesn't (necessarily) test the ideas behind a design. Bad ideas can get in, and stay in -- nothing challenges the arrogance of the uninformed.

If, on the other hand, you are humble, and "know what you don't know", a rapid prototype can be a powerful way to get some experience, test your ideas, and, who knows, maybe even ship something.

slantyyz3• 16 years ago

I would argue a different root cause for "Analysis Paralysis": fear.

Most people who analyze things to death fear making decisions that result in a mistake (subsequently resulting in job loss). The costlier a decision, the more likely the paralysis will occur.

And quite often, these people are technically competent.

Debunking the duct tape programmer

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