Documentation, who needs it!
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Hi All, I just need to winge. I have a project to replicate a PSION hand held easy though I, set up a Serial Port, off I go copy the commands and done. The joys of non-responsive comms, data backwards that must be read left to right but sent back right to left. Commands that some times need a space other times not. The nice hex values that are reversed and need to bit wised & to get some data out of them. The fact that you seem to be able to tell it to something it will not respond so you tell it again it then does it twice some commands needing a CR LF other a LF only. Documentation that is not really relavent. Being told on a Friday that you are not updating one number, you then get it to update the number but you are not told what it's maximum / minimum if you are updating the original or just a saved copy. The customer has all the available hardware so you make a change and have no idea if it works. Please tell me I'm not the only one! normally I have around some idea of how the system works not this time!:~
Pure folly in a "customer" development scenario to not have specifications when coding to a specific API. Might work if it is only a small borderline case in a large piece of work but only because it becomes noise in terms of cost. If not the development shop ends up eating additional cost as they go back and forth with multiple iterations.
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I am part of a team that makes software to run large-scale, commercial ink-jet printing systems. These multi-million dollar machines are definitely not your mama's DeskJet. We occasionally make custom versions of the product. In most cases, we never have the hardware in-house to test against, and are told "we will do system integration at the customer's site" :wtf:. What this means, of course, is that one or more engineers goes to live at the customer's facility until the @#@$!@## thing works.
Software Zen:
delete this;Sound familiar. Except we do it with software too. Our customer has software X, and we need to interact with it through flat text files (no API or whatever, noooo). Something doesn't work correctly so we make a fix. Since we don't have software X and the file processing crashes if we only process one file because we don't have the customers data we just put it in production and hope for the best :) This software X is really a pain too. Keeps giving us the same file every ten minutes. We need to update thousands of records every time because one record MIGHT have changed... It would've been a lot easier if it only gave us changed records, but it gives us all. Every. Time...
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
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Hi All, I just need to winge. I have a project to replicate a PSION hand held easy though I, set up a Serial Port, off I go copy the commands and done. The joys of non-responsive comms, data backwards that must be read left to right but sent back right to left. Commands that some times need a space other times not. The nice hex values that are reversed and need to bit wised & to get some data out of them. The fact that you seem to be able to tell it to something it will not respond so you tell it again it then does it twice some commands needing a CR LF other a LF only. Documentation that is not really relavent. Being told on a Friday that you are not updating one number, you then get it to update the number but you are not told what it's maximum / minimum if you are updating the original or just a saved copy. The customer has all the available hardware so you make a change and have no idea if it works. Please tell me I'm not the only one! normally I have around some idea of how the system works not this time!:~
I am afraid these are unavoidable situations. In early phases of development of a product, many specification details are still into thin air, and a trial and error process takes place to fill in the holes. If development runs at the same time as specification (which is partly acceptable), you can be sure that documentation will lag behind. Two reasons: 1. developers want to develop, not to write the doc. They hate writing the doc. And 2. developers know that the development in progress is in a temporary state, prone to innumerable minute changes that they would have to reflect in the doc. But, remember, they hate writing they doc, they want to develop. Development is a subtle mixture of carefully crafted requirements definition, architecture design, coding, testing, planning and scheduling one one hand, and joyful creative mess on the othe hand. It probably has to be so. The true skills of project managers is to find the right balance betwen the two trends, and to make sure that the people who have to talk to each other do get along.
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Sound familiar. Except we do it with software too. Our customer has software X, and we need to interact with it through flat text files (no API or whatever, noooo). Something doesn't work correctly so we make a fix. Since we don't have software X and the file processing crashes if we only process one file because we don't have the customers data we just put it in production and hope for the best :) This software X is really a pain too. Keeps giving us the same file every ten minutes. We need to update thousands of records every time because one record MIGHT have changed... It would've been a lot easier if it only gave us changed records, but it gives us all. Every. Time...
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}If you update thousands of records because of one... Chances are that if I'm your project manager I won't be happy... But your surely have found a solution on that issue ;) Saying this, but I know how it is... Regards, Eric
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Hi All, I just need to winge. I have a project to replicate a PSION hand held easy though I, set up a Serial Port, off I go copy the commands and done. The joys of non-responsive comms, data backwards that must be read left to right but sent back right to left. Commands that some times need a space other times not. The nice hex values that are reversed and need to bit wised & to get some data out of them. The fact that you seem to be able to tell it to something it will not respond so you tell it again it then does it twice some commands needing a CR LF other a LF only. Documentation that is not really relavent. Being told on a Friday that you are not updating one number, you then get it to update the number but you are not told what it's maximum / minimum if you are updating the original or just a saved copy. The customer has all the available hardware so you make a change and have no idea if it works. Please tell me I'm not the only one! normally I have around some idea of how the system works not this time!:~
Easy tip, For lines that you copy from other projects, at least put an In-Code project. // = single line in most programming languages -- = single line in SQL /* */ = multi line in most programming languages and SQL. My company uses { } for their documentation code, it's quite confusing, but I'm used to it since the time I started here a year ago.
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Sound familiar. Except we do it with software too. Our customer has software X, and we need to interact with it through flat text files (no API or whatever, noooo). Something doesn't work correctly so we make a fix. Since we don't have software X and the file processing crashes if we only process one file because we don't have the customers data we just put it in production and hope for the best :) This software X is really a pain too. Keeps giving us the same file every ten minutes. We need to update thousands of records every time because one record MIGHT have changed... It would've been a lot easier if it only gave us changed records, but it gives us all. Every. Time...
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}We have had similar issues. One of our products emulates another company's high-volume printers, so our customers expect us to print that kind of data exactly the way they do, even when their printer doesn't adhere to the specification. We occasionally get complaints about this, and the customer refuses to send us the non-compliant data. They send us 'sample' data, which of course doesn't exhibit the problem. Round and round we go...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Easy tip, For lines that you copy from other projects, at least put an In-Code project. // = single line in most programming languages -- = single line in SQL /* */ = multi line in most programming languages and SQL. My company uses { } for their documentation code, it's quite confusing, but I'm used to it since the time I started here a year ago.
Matter of interest you mention methods of commenting and then { & }, the only time I have seen that was in PASCAL back at colledge, do you use some version of PASCAL (or Delphi if it uses the same style) ? Glenn
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Matter of interest you mention methods of commenting and then { & }, the only time I have seen that was in PASCAL back at colledge, do you use some version of PASCAL (or Delphi if it uses the same style) ? Glenn
The system we work off of was built in PASCAL and ported into Delphi, so it is likely possible that it uses the same Comment Space.
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The system we work off of was built in PASCAL and ported into Delphi, so it is likely possible that it uses the same Comment Space.
My memorys of PASCAL are much clouded (by time, alchol, minor brain damage, the usual!) but I remembered some thing! Yayy me :)
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Hi All, I just need to winge. I have a project to replicate a PSION hand held easy though I, set up a Serial Port, off I go copy the commands and done. The joys of non-responsive comms, data backwards that must be read left to right but sent back right to left. Commands that some times need a space other times not. The nice hex values that are reversed and need to bit wised & to get some data out of them. The fact that you seem to be able to tell it to something it will not respond so you tell it again it then does it twice some commands needing a CR LF other a LF only. Documentation that is not really relavent. Being told on a Friday that you are not updating one number, you then get it to update the number but you are not told what it's maximum / minimum if you are updating the original or just a saved copy. The customer has all the available hardware so you make a change and have no idea if it works. Please tell me I'm not the only one! normally I have around some idea of how the system works not this time!:~
Weeeelll, how bout' having an ole' COBOL programmer who wrote and maintained this app for the last fifteen years and then up and decided it was time to retire one afternoon; off to Mexico he went. The app gets dropped in my lap, and not a bit of documentation, oh wait. There is one that say's "Dan knows How to do that". Dan is in Mexico. So, everymonth Dan ran some hacks that did some workarounds that fixed all the issues the app had since the birth of this beast. No one knows where they live on the main frame and no one cares to try and find out; they won't let me on production yet, i am still wet around the ears. So, there is a government agency losing about a million a month cuz of "not my problem". It is mine though, but hands are tied. I did suggest a per diem trip to Mexico and have a chat with Dan; they actually took it into consideration. :sigh:
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Weeeelll, how bout' having an ole' COBOL programmer who wrote and maintained this app for the last fifteen years and then up and decided it was time to retire one afternoon; off to Mexico he went. The app gets dropped in my lap, and not a bit of documentation, oh wait. There is one that say's "Dan knows How to do that". Dan is in Mexico. So, everymonth Dan ran some hacks that did some workarounds that fixed all the issues the app had since the birth of this beast. No one knows where they live on the main frame and no one cares to try and find out; they won't let me on production yet, i am still wet around the ears. So, there is a government agency losing about a million a month cuz of "not my problem". It is mine though, but hands are tied. I did suggest a per diem trip to Mexico and have a chat with Dan; they actually took it into consideration. :sigh:
Sounds an awful lot like this project, handed from one dead company to another, using old components that are a pain to source, hand helds that are Rocking Horse Doo Doo. I have had to work with some code like you describe, VB4 spagetti, it was easier to write it in C# then fix any feature that didn't work (boss disagreed). I am now fluent in a programming style that can be descibed by :~ . my latest joy was finding out the number from the smart card was in Hex not Dec :|, I have then beaten the dang thing to take hex numbers, it seems to can't find what that change has broken yet?.
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Hi All, I just need to winge. I have a project to replicate a PSION hand held easy though I, set up a Serial Port, off I go copy the commands and done. The joys of non-responsive comms, data backwards that must be read left to right but sent back right to left. Commands that some times need a space other times not. The nice hex values that are reversed and need to bit wised & to get some data out of them. The fact that you seem to be able to tell it to something it will not respond so you tell it again it then does it twice some commands needing a CR LF other a LF only. Documentation that is not really relavent. Being told on a Friday that you are not updating one number, you then get it to update the number but you are not told what it's maximum / minimum if you are updating the original or just a saved copy. The customer has all the available hardware so you make a change and have no idea if it works. Please tell me I'm not the only one! normally I have around some idea of how the system works not this time!:~
Once in my long and infamous career, I was tasked with programming automatic phone dialers (to my eternal shame). I asked the hardware designer (it was a custom interface card for an Apple II) for the documentation on how to talk to the hardware. The SOB pointed to the schematic and said, "That's all you need." :wtf: And then left. They have yet to find the body. Luckily for me, this was the day of standard chips and I dug out the specs for the big ones and color coded inputs, outputs, and bi-directionals. It was good that I knew his name, it made it easier to curse him. Along the way I found out why certain features on the card did not work. It seemed nobody knew the difference between milli- and micro- symbols when attached to time units.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I am part of a team that makes software to run large-scale, commercial ink-jet printing systems. These multi-million dollar machines are definitely not your mama's DeskJet. We occasionally make custom versions of the product. In most cases, we never have the hardware in-house to test against, and are told "we will do system integration at the customer's site" :wtf:. What this means, of course, is that one or more engineers goes to live at the customer's facility until the @#@$!@## thing works.
Software Zen:
delete this;Hahahaha, reminds me of when I programmed conveyor systems. We couldn't program them until they were built and the client expected the system to start up the moment the last nut was tightened. Each system was custom and there were no simulators. When I interviewed for the job, they said I'd be out of town 3 days out of the month. It turned out to be the other way around! It was check into a hotel near the site and start coding. When you get it up and running, the plant manager expects you to cover all three shifts to make sure everything is working. I was in the field for six months on one system, most I cranked out within two weeks, but this one the company oversold its capabilities and the client wasn't going to sign off until it performed per spec. It didn't matter that the salesman used the wrong formula and sold it with less than 1% safety margin. The first thing you learn in material handling is that 10% is the minimum to plan around. I had to create the correct formula and found it could NEVER perform to contract. My boss got fired over that, but the salesman kept his job and commission.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Once in my long and infamous career, I was tasked with programming automatic phone dialers (to my eternal shame). I asked the hardware designer (it was a custom interface card for an Apple II) for the documentation on how to talk to the hardware. The SOB pointed to the schematic and said, "That's all you need." :wtf: And then left. They have yet to find the body. Luckily for me, this was the day of standard chips and I dug out the specs for the big ones and color coded inputs, outputs, and bi-directionals. It was good that I knew his name, it made it easier to curse him. Along the way I found out why certain features on the card did not work. It seemed nobody knew the difference between milli- and micro- symbols when attached to time units.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
Ahh, Standard Chips the good old days, today you get a Micro or Programmable device some interfacing dodads and thats about all, ask for the code program in the programmable device and you either get some hacked C or a vendor specific file (usually in a format that can't read, except by the costly program) and pray what you have been told is correct. Glenn
