Software Bloat.
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Came across this article written by Niklaus Wirth in 1995 that is quite applicable to the state of software today in 2024. Thought I would share it. "A Plea for Lean Software" https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf[^]
Gary Stachelski 2021 wrote:
"A Plea for Lean Software"
Written of course by someone who spent his entire life in academia. Idealism is wonderful but loses its luster when the paychecks stops coming. I suspect clean and elegant code probably is more possible when a company is making money and the CTO owns enough equity that he is on the board. And of course the CTO actually cares about the code as well. Vast majority of software doesn't work like that though. Last two companies I have been at have 20 years of legacy code. Both companies have been through mergers and one with more than 10 mergers. Naturally this means numerous rounds of people applying 'fixes' to make the code 'better'. Which changes with the next round of new employees while the previous ones are long gone. I have worked on systems that I designed from scratch. Sometimes I have even had the opportunity to make up my own business rules as I went along. Of course in those systems there is no need to worry about breaking existing functionality. Those solutions certainly seemed elegant. To me of course. These days chatter of elegant code from a developer impresses not at all. While the ability to deliver working code that works with the enterprise (not just adhoc tests carried out on a developer box) again and again impresses me quite a bit.
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Gary Stachelski 2021 wrote:
"A Plea for Lean Software"
Written of course by someone who spent his entire life in academia. Idealism is wonderful but loses its luster when the paychecks stops coming. I suspect clean and elegant code probably is more possible when a company is making money and the CTO owns enough equity that he is on the board. And of course the CTO actually cares about the code as well. Vast majority of software doesn't work like that though. Last two companies I have been at have 20 years of legacy code. Both companies have been through mergers and one with more than 10 mergers. Naturally this means numerous rounds of people applying 'fixes' to make the code 'better'. Which changes with the next round of new employees while the previous ones are long gone. I have worked on systems that I designed from scratch. Sometimes I have even had the opportunity to make up my own business rules as I went along. Of course in those systems there is no need to worry about breaking existing functionality. Those solutions certainly seemed elegant. To me of course. These days chatter of elegant code from a developer impresses not at all. While the ability to deliver working code that works with the enterprise (not just adhoc tests carried out on a developer box) again and again impresses me quite a bit.
Hi, Having worked on the "Big Iron" for a number of years....I would meet with various members of the IBM organization from time to time. Was in a meeting once (Virtual) and this comment was made by a higher level IBM VP (who hadn't remembered/ realized there were non-IBMer's present. " Slow software sells fast hardware " There were a number of chuckles etc from the meeting invitee's. And that IBM VP moved on from there.
Cegarman document code? If it's not intuitive, you're in the wrong field :D Welcome to my Chaos and Confusion!