Software Development: a Super Broad View (this title sucks btw)

Just to get this settled now: I am sure James will beat me at the Euler contest. Considering that I am having trouble remembering how to properly compute Fibonacci numbers, I feel that my chances are doomed. Add on top of that that I am going to be pretty damn busy for…well the rest of the month (shipping a version release), well…whatever.

So on to my topic for this week –

Software Development: a Super Broad View.

That is probably a horrible title for what I want to talk about, but it’s the best you are going to get right now. My project is supposed to drop in roughly the next four weeks. Our System Integration and Test team still have over 600 test cases to go – these things are anywhere from 20-80 pages (maybe more). We also have a multitude of bug fixes and new features to test, re-fix the ones that break still, and retest. I think System I&T has around seven, maybe eight people working for them. Our software team has nine, including myself. That’s a fuckton of work that needs to get done fast!

My co-worker, K, (on a different project) blames poor project management. “We should not have let ourselves make promises we couldn’t keep”. My other co-worker, C, says “Well, we have to make promises we hope we can keep so we can get the contract”. This game the industry plays depresses me. Here comes the big, bad contractee (in our case the Military, HAH) and so of course we say “Yes oh high and might master, we shalt deliver unto thee supreme software” (hm so I just hovered over the squiqqly in word under thee, expecting an explanation. I am too used to Eclipse). Anyway…we say something like that. But who gets fucked over by this? The workers! They need to bust ass in order to fix the bugs, implement the new features, fix the new bugs that the new features produced, etc.

I understand this is how the industry is; it just makes me sad on the inside. I truly wish for a better world, where people don’t get fucked over by the higher ups, and everyone trusts each other, and is fair and honest, and you can actually be informed of the presidential candidates and still feel good about voting. I know those things will never happen. So we do the best we can regardless. All I know is that I am going to be very busy until December.

-Matt