• blindman (unregistered)
    PerdidoPunk:
    Given ample time to consider all points of the design, I am certain I could come up with a better design than what already exists.
    I have enought experience to say with confidence, simply from reading your posts, that you do not have enough experience to manage the development of any complex application.
    PerdidoPunk:
    ...I think the tripping block of many young developers is the tendency to rush into work without first considering a full design...
    But...GASP...considering the full design is not "Agile"!!!

    You have MUCH to learn, young Padawan.

  • (cs) in reply to PerdidoPunk
    PerdidoPunk:
    You make a good point here. The one major thing I see as an obstacle for doing such a thing is time constraints. Given ample time to consider all points of the design, I am certain I could come up with a better design than what already exists.
    It's much easier to improve upon a system you have gotten familiar with over some time than to design a new one from the ground up. The biggest mistake the "rock stars" in the story made was to concentrate on the exciting prospects of designing a new system and ignore the chance to learn from the old one. The biggest mistake the company made was to foster this attitude.
  • (cs) in reply to A Gould
    A Gould:

    Which leads to the next natural question - how come no-one is learning this tech? (My company works on an AS/400 system, and everytime I google for training material, all I get is loads of "help wanted" ads). Seems a shame that no-one is learning established systems anymore...

    My school abolished Assembly language from its curriculum right after I graduated... Go figure.

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    FredSaw:
    akatherder:
    The lesson I garnered from the metaphor is that dinosaurs aren't extinct. They're just waiting for us to screw up badly enough and they'll retake the Earth.
    Yes... when the raptor comes. Hallelujah, brother!
    That, sir, was a BRILLIANT pun!
    Thankya! And thankya for not saying it was BRILLANT.

    Puns, double entendre, innuendo and wordplay in general are the height of humor, enabling us to slip the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Cool - In my experience they fire the dinosaurs anyway and hire a new set of "rock stars" to do version 3.

    I'm currently on version 5 - from rock star to on the way of becoming a dinosaur

  • Dublin Hurler of the year (unregistered)

    What "rock star programmer" would take a job coding Visual Basic? Of course they sucked.

  • not a dinosaur (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    The lesson I garnered from the metaphor is that dinosaurs aren't extinct. They're just waiting for us to screw up badly enough and they'll retake the Earth.
    No we-- er, no they aren't.

    Also I can't see the second page. It's that "An Error Occurred" page that still says "Worse Than Failure" in the title bar.

  • (cs) in reply to Andrew

    I showed my project manager the image and said "Hey, I found a picture of you!"

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to PerdidoPunk
    PerdidoPunk:
    ...it's very difficult for one maverick programmer to create something and have it be completely bulletproof.
    That's what I told Dan Bricklin in 1978...

    -Harrow.

  • sewiv (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    Then explain it, oh so brilliant one. How is it anything other than a jab at conservatives?

    This is a serious request.

  • sewiv (unregistered) in reply to sewiv
    sewiv:
    Then explain it, oh so brilliant one. How is it anything other than a jab at conservatives?

    This is a serious request.

    That should have been quoting this:

    People who don't understand this cartoon have a pretty shallow understanding of humor.
  • Screwed in Review (unregistered) in reply to themagni
    themagni:

    When you think about it, the whole industry is based on hiring people who can't figure out that x / 60 is less than x / 40. (Where x is salary paid by week.)

    That's why I always apply my salary rule: The more you work, the less you get paid.

    One time my company royally screwed in my review, and I got a pittance of the full raise they had promised me after pulling many extra hours and taking on extra projects. So I applied my rule and gave myself a raise. (Came in later, left earlier.)

    It's amazing the number of companies that expect work ethics from their employees and yet have no pay ethic.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered)
    Things went downhill from there. By week five, the customer had become downright hostile. It was losing clients and demanded that InsuraCorp put it back on version 1 or face the wrath of its legal team.

    Sounds like the perfect time for some dinosaurs to insist on a raise.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to Screwed in Review
    Screwed in Review:
    One time my company royally screwed in my review, and I got a pittance of the full raise they had promised me after pulling many extra hours and taking on extra projects. So I applied my rule and gave myself a raise. (Came in later, left earlier.)

    It's amazing the number of companies that expect work ethics from their employees and yet have no pay ethic.

    Good for you! If a company only pays you enough to keep you from leaving... you should only work hard enough to not get fired.

  • hoobergoober (unregistered) in reply to Screwed in Review

    i agree with the point of this post, and have had similar experiences. when talking about the question of why the 'dinosaur' developers aren't trained on newer technology, nobody has suggested that those old school developers rarely want to learn anything new. i'm a contract unix developer who does a lot of work for larger companies who tend to have a lot of legacy mainframe apps they're trying to convert or at least document. i can't tell you how many mainframe guys i've worked with who absolutely refuse to learn anything new. any discussion of any technology quickly devolves into 'everything works better on the mainframe', etc.

    as far as the question of why younger folks aren't trained on older tech, businessmanprogrammersteve got it exactly right. unless you're willing to purchase an as/400 or mainframe, you can't learn those technologies on your own. oracle, java, linux, sqlserver, websphere, etc. can all be downloaded for free (if only in some demo version). if you genuinely want to learn these technologies, all you need is a decent workstation and an internet connection. you can't say the same for mainframe technologies.

  • Edward Royce (unregistered)

    Hmmmm.

    I must admit that this strikes pretty close to home. My job just got eliminated because of outsourcing to a dev team in India. Though I'm a bit divided about it.

    On the one hand I don't have a job and I have to go through the hassle of getting another one.

    On the other hand I don't have to deal with a database design that requires 9+ joins just to get anything worthwhile.

    On the gripping hand I'm at home, surfing the web and having a cold beer.

    Life ..... is good. :)

  • (cs) in reply to sewiv
    sewiv:
    Then explain it, oh so brilliant one. How is it anything other than a jab at conservatives?

    This is a serious request.

    I must defer to those who have summed up our situation more succinctly than could I.
    R. Crumb's Mr. Natural:
    If you don't know by now, just don't mess with it.
    Hank Williams Jr.:
    Some of us are born with it; some of us don't ever, ever get it."
    My goodness, when folks offer such an open invitation, how can an ol' boy pass it by?

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    The dinosaurs might also want to learn that lesson about evolution. It's amazing what wonders you can do with a copy of "Teach Yourself VB.NET in 20 Minutes" or a similar book.
    I think you misunderstand. The Dino's may actively want to move on to creating something new but are prevented from doing so. Dino's are often 'rewarded' for creating a great system by being relegated to a maintenance role on that system. From a manager's point of view, their knowlege of the old system makes them too valuable to have them working on something else, because itd be too difficult to train a newb on it. They dont understand that the real value of the dinos is their knowlege of their company's business process and of the industry they are in - not the syntax of the language of choice.
  • (cs) in reply to hoobergoober
    hoobergoober:
    i agree with the point of this post, and have had similar experiences. when talking about the question of why the 'dinosaur' developers aren't trained on newer technology, nobody has suggested that those old school developers rarely want to learn anything new.

    Actually in my post way up there (number 2) I implied it. As a company you state that you are moving forward, you bring in some new guys, a few of the old ones leave, some stay. You can assume the ones that leave are the ones that don't want to learn, the ones that stay are looking at the future.

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Edward Royce
    Edward Royce:
    Hmmmm.

    On the other hand I don't have to deal with a database design that requires 9+ joins just to get anything worthwhile.

    Wow, sounds like the job I just left. Nothing was human readable unless you performed like 27 joins in the database.

    The guy who designed it thought it was a great idea. I'm all for normalization but joins can be an expensive operation too.

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    real_aardvark:
    I think you're demonstrating a pitifully inadequate grasp of the Republicans' view of what constitutes "a Free Market," Fred.
    Republicans? Well, there ya go.

    [image]

    LOL @ TEH OLD FARTS TEY IS STOOPID AN RACISST CUZ TEY DISAGRE WIT ME OBAMA FOR PREZ! TEH RACISTS COSERVATISE DONT LIEK OBAMA CUZ HES BLACK!

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    AT:
    [image]

    Huh. I know plenty of smart folks who vote Repub, Dem, and Libertarian. Political positions are correlated with value systems, not intelligence. People who don't understand that fundamental premise have a pretty shallow understanding of human decision making and motivation.

    People who don't understand this cartoon have a pretty shallow understanding of humor.
    It's saying most conservatives are too stupid to work in tech. It's just flamebait, and only funny to leftists.

  • T604 (unregistered) in reply to Procedural
    Procedural:
    I'm always amazed when companies think that changing the eye candy (interface) also means dumping a good back-end. Couldn't they first start with webifying the old app's interfaces (interacting with data through green screen proxies if necessary, but more likely through a form of RPC) and keep the experienced devs in the loop to oversee the pups ?

    I agree but often the good back end is running on machines/os's platforms that are being end of lifed. Eventually those dibol programmers are going to want to retire and there aren't going to be many new ones (if any).

    So sometimes a complete tech refresh isn't a bad idea.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    It's saying most conservatives are too stupid to work in tech. It's just flamebait, and only funny to leftists.
    The reason it's only funny to leftists is because the truth hurts. [image]
  • T604 (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    FredSaw:
    AT:
    [image]

    Huh. I know plenty of smart folks who vote Repub, Dem, and Libertarian. Political positions are correlated with value systems, not intelligence. People who don't understand that fundamental premise have a pretty shallow understanding of human decision making and motivation.

    People who don't understand this cartoon have a pretty shallow understanding of humor.
    It's saying most conservatives are too stupid to work in tech. It's just flamebait, and only funny to leftists.

    I'm a leftist and I didn't find the comic particularly funny. Actually I was trying to figure out what the joke was. I was thinking it was somehow poking fun at liberals. I guess I was over thinking a rather poor attempt at humour.

  • no name (unregistered) in reply to T604
    T604:
    I agree but often the good back end is running on machines/os's platforms that are being end of lifed. Eventually those dibol programmers are going to want to retire and there aren't going to be many new ones (if any).

    So sometimes a complete tech refresh isn't a bad idea.

    The idea is once you've rewritten the front end, you can work on replacing the back end. This is often safer and faster than replacing the whole lot at once.

  • no name (unregistered) in reply to PerdidoPunk
    PerdidoPunk:
    Yes, given an appropriate time frame and proper documentation of our business workflow and services.

    If I had access to magic pixie dust, I wouldn't be wasting it on work.

  • (cs) in reply to no name
    no name:
    T604:
    I agree but often the good back end is running on machines/os's platforms that are being end of lifed. Eventually those dibol programmers are going to want to retire and there aren't going to be many new ones (if any).

    So sometimes a complete tech refresh isn't a bad idea.

    The idea is once you've rewritten the front end, you can work on replacing the back end. This is often safer and faster than replacing the whole lot at once.

    Depends on how well the interface between front and back end designed. Sometimes the only way to fit into what exists is to just recreate the same crap you're trying to replace.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to blindman
    blindman:
    PerdidoPunk:
    Currently I'm just a lowly Associate IT Analyst, but I know that if I were asked to redesign the application I work on from the ground up, I could do a good job of it.
    I'm sure that's exactly what all the rock stars at Insurcorp felt as well.
    SQL Server had been abandoned for indexed files stored on VMS.
    Dumbasses.

    Indexed data files are not a WTF. Every database is some kind of organized file format.

    A poorly designed SQL schema can be far worse than indexed files stored on VMS. Someone chose proper indexes on the VMS. Do you think the rock stars put in equivalent SQL indexes?

    Many COBOL-style data files are ISAM format. MySQL even uses an ISAM derivative for its table-files.

  • Richard Sargent (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    The lesson I garnered from the metaphor is that dinosaurs aren't extinct. They're just waiting for us to screw up badly enough and they'll retake the Earth.

    A guy I work with has a photocopied T-Rex on his wall from 15 or so years ago. The caption? "The mainframe is back ... and its pissed!"

  • no name (unregistered) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    Depends on how well the interface between front and back end designed.

    True, for this to succeed you need a well designed interface. A strait forward Transaction A == Screen A is not likely to work well.

    vt_mruhlin:
    Sometimes the only way to fit into what exists is to just recreate the same crap you're trying to replace.

    Although often (and it appears to be the case here) it's not that the old stuff is crap, it's just that it's getting to old to maintain.

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to no name
    no name:
    PerdidoPunk:
    Yes, given an appropriate time frame and proper documentation of our business workflow and services.

    If I had access to magic pixie dust, I wouldn't be wasting it on work.

    What is this "proper documentation" that you speak of ?

  • (cs) in reply to AT
    AT:
    Huh. I know plenty of smart folks who vote Repub, Dem, and Libertarian. Political positions are correlated with value systems, not intelligence. People who don't understand that fundamental premise have a pretty shallow understanding of human decision making and motivation.
    QFT
  • Gary (unregistered) in reply to A Gould
    A Gould:
    Which leads to the next natural question - how come no-one is learning this tech? (My company works on an AS/400 system, and everytime I google for training material, all I get is loads of "help wanted" ads). Seems a shame that no-one is learning established systems anymore...
    You can't be promoted if you can't be replaced.
  • mike (unregistered) in reply to A Gould

    [quote user="A Gould"][quote user="jetcitywoman"] Seems a shame that no-one is learning established systems anymore...[/quote]

    Come see some of the unis around here. I just started a unit that includes a section on thinnet. No mention of ADSL or anything modern, but the classics are well covered.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    FredSaw:
    AT:
    [image]

    Huh. I know plenty of smart folks who vote Repub, Dem, and Libertarian. Political positions are correlated with value systems, not intelligence. People who don't understand that fundamental premise have a pretty shallow understanding of human decision making and motivation.

    People who don't understand this cartoon have a pretty shallow understanding of humor.
    It's saying most conservatives are too stupid to work in tech. It's just flamebait, and only funny to leftists.

    Don't be a tool. It's saying that most tech workers aren't 'conservatives'. Of course, 'conservatives' aren't really conservatives either.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    no name:
    T604:
    I agree but often the good back end is running on machines/os's platforms that are being end of lifed. Eventually those dibol programmers are going to want to retire and there aren't going to be many new ones (if any).

    So sometimes a complete tech refresh isn't a bad idea.

    The idea is once you've rewritten the front end, you can work on replacing the back end. This is often safer and faster than replacing the whole lot at once.

    Depends on how well the interface between front and back end designed. Sometimes the only way to fit into what exists is to just recreate the same crap you're trying to replace.

    So write a front end that screen scrapes the current system. Come up with a datamodel/architecture that can be migrated piecemeal, and move things from screenscraping to direct access bit by bit. Incremental approaches work better

  • brian (unregistered)

    seriously? that was a lame story.

  • fattybob (unregistered) in reply to Andrew

    sad but oh so true

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    Just curious... is your gradually shrinking team being compensated according to their gradually increasing (due to supply versus demand) value?

    BWAHAHAHAH you make me laugh :)

    What a curious concept you have put forth.

  • German B (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    [quote user="FredSaw"]Shouldn't this topic be titled, "Jurbuttic Programmers"?/quote]

    It definitely should have. At work, I cannot open a page that has "ass" somewhere in the URL (a true WTF in itself). In "full article" mode I could read it, but not open the comments.

  • Voter (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    operagost:
    FredSaw:
    AT:
    [image]

    Huh. I know plenty of smart folks who vote Repub, Dem, and Libertarian. Political positions are correlated with value systems, not intelligence. People who don't understand that fundamental premise have a pretty shallow understanding of human decision making and motivation.

    People who don't understand this cartoon have a pretty shallow understanding of humor.
    It's saying most conservatives are too stupid to work in tech. It's just flamebait, and only funny to leftists.

    Don't be a tool. It's saying that most tech workers aren't 'conservatives'. Of course, 'conservatives' aren't really conservatives either.

    The flip side is that the 'boss' sees conservatives as 'dumb' because he has no response to their arguments (or mean, if dumb is an obvious miscast).

  • Beeblebrox (unregistered)

    Die, asshole!

  • Watson (unregistered) in reply to PerdidoPunk
    PerdidoPunk:
    You make a good point here. The one major thing I see as an obstacle for doing such a thing is time constraints. Given ample time to consider all points of the design, I am certain I could come up with a better design than what already exists.
    That's merely one example. Y'see, everything you learned in class was predicated on the assumption that everything else (management, customers, building infrastructure) works.
  • Watson (unregistered)

    (Interesting: change the CAPTCHA and the spamming starts. Still, it's not exactly hard to read. But irrelevancies aside...)

    Evolution? That's the development process that involves accepting a failure rate of over 99%, right?

  • David Cameron (unregistered) in reply to PerdidoPunk
    PerdidoPunk:
    It seems to me like a lot of people have something against the "fresh blood." I graduated from college last year. That doesn't mean that I don't know anything about data structures, or that I can't reliably test things, or design a system. Currently I'm just a lowly Associate IT Analyst, but I know that if I were asked to redesign the application I work on from the ground up, I could do a good job of it.

    And therein lies the problem with fresh blood. You think you can redesign the application from the ground up.

    You know how there are WTFs on this site? You will be contributing your own.

  • William Mooney (unregistered)

    Alex, great article! As a 23-year veteran with Synergex, the company that continues to enhance the original DIBOL language (now Synergy/DE) to keep it current with today's hardware, OSs, databases, web interfaces, APIs, etc., (Ok, I'll stop with the shameless plug), I have encountered numerous experiences similar to yours—most of them with the same outcome you described. Just yesterday, literally, I received a call from a customer who said their non-technical upper management wants to rewrite their 32-year old [successful] Synergy/DE-based application that is running on OpenVMS to a Windows-based VB .NET/SQL Server system. The genesis of this direction was an acquaintance of upper management who offered inexpensive offshore resources to rewrite the application.

    Years ago, I used to fret over such calls. Now, I still fret—but more about how much time and money the company is going to waste by making these hasty decisions without first defining what their "business-based" objectives are--just to ultimately return to their original [successful] application. After all, isn't the only reason to have computers and applications in the first place to either reduce costs or increase business? How will the rewrite really affect their bottom line? Will they have more business when their applications are rewritten? Will they require less resources/personnel as a result? What are the expected costs of the rewrite? Etc. Etc.(This is a whole subject in its own right.)

    Companies could save a whole lot of money (and anguish) if they just took time to ask themselves some fundamental questions before making these leaps—questions like, can we achieve our business objectives by evolving our existing (time-tested) applications to new technology instead of making revolutionary changes? In my experience, you can't take an application based on 20 years of development by multiple developers and rewrite it in a new environment in 5 years (not to mention 1 or 2, which is what is often expected at the beginning of these projects). It's mind-blowing how much time and money is spent on rewriting applications just for the sake of rewriting them -- often at the request of what you call "rock stars" -- just to determine that the original environment was as good as or better than the new one which may or may not ever be achieved.

    Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir -- thank you again for the article and for sharing your story.

    Bill

    P.S. If that customer you referenced still wants to achieve their business objectives, utilizing the experienced dinosaurs to "evolve" the applications, have them give me a call.

  • (cs)

    DIBOL?

    DIaBOLic? ]:->

  • (cs)

    Oh boy. Three years ago I was the graduate. Fortunately for me I was hired by a start-up company. I wasn't even hired for IT, but due to need and my fresh IT degree I became a in-house developer. The lessons I learned were invaluable to me, but looking back letting people with as much experience as I had then build something for SALE... Idiotic is the word.

  • alioth (unregistered)

    Is it just me who utterly loaths the new buzzword term "rock star programmer"?

    The term is used as if it's a good thing. To me, the term immediately means something bad - "rock star" when prepended to "programmer" or "developer" is the diametric opposite of "good software developer" or "good programmer".

    To me, the words "rock star" imply the following, especially when applied to "programmer" (even more so than "rock star" on its own):

    • Big ego
    • Supreme arrogance
    • Prima donna attitude
    • Tissue thin skin

    Which I think are the attributes you absolutely want to avoid in a good software developer. To me, a good software developer should be humble enough to (a) recognise when they have made an error, (b) not get stroppy when someone tells them this (even if it's a junior colleague). A good software developer should always be aware of their own limitations, and quietly and without fuss learn what's needed to try and address these limitations. A good software developer should be persuasive when arguing a technology issue not by shouting down the other party, but by making well-reasoned, rational and adult argument.

    Most of the very good and very competent software developers I've worked with have fit this. In my last life, code inspections were a way of life, and there was nothing worse than doing the code inspection with the "rock star developer" because of the arrogant, egotistical attitude. Fortunately, we only ever had one of these "rock star developers" and they left.

    We're going to be hiring a new person to our team eventually. When we do, I've got half a mind to write the ad in two parts actually advertising the same position, but one half of the ad asking for a "rock star" and the other with a more humble description...then immediately reject the CVs (tr. US: resume) of anyone who responds to the "rock star" half - because any software developer who calls themselves a "rock star" is obviously full of themselves and will be a nightmare to work with. It reminds me of that study that was done a few years ago - the incompetent vastly overrate their skills, whereas the competent are continuously paranoid that they might not actually be competent and tend to underrate their skills.

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