How to continue a chaos project?
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How to continue a chaos project? I've got to continue a project missing documentation and comments. The former author has left the company ( the best thing he has done for the company ). His Knowledge of OOP was quite low. It is not possible to persuade the boss to give up and make a totally new start on this project. So I have to renew the most problematic part. Its the communication via RS232 to an Epson Robot-controller. Besides, its a Borland 3.0 project. Can anybody give some hints how to continue a chaotic software? :| Friedrich
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How to continue a chaos project? I've got to continue a project missing documentation and comments. The former author has left the company ( the best thing he has done for the company ). His Knowledge of OOP was quite low. It is not possible to persuade the boss to give up and make a totally new start on this project. So I have to renew the most problematic part. Its the communication via RS232 to an Epson Robot-controller. Besides, its a Borland 3.0 project. Can anybody give some hints how to continue a chaotic software? :| Friedrich
Yeah, Don't forget that your boss was also your predeccor's boss and as such he probably feels that he is in part responsible for the project that your predecessor churned out, and is unwilling to believe that it is so chaotic as to be unsalvagable. He would probably consider a re-start as throwing away what was probably years of work. Trouble is if you do try to salvage it you will almost certainly end up with a chaotic, albeit "functional" (if you're lucky), project which will continue to be a maintenance nightmare for its lifetime. In addition, it will probably take you longer to get it to that stage than simply starting from scratch. Try to be a bit more persuasive about retarting. If all else fails tell your boss you are only fixing up the part he wants you to work on and just start again anyway in your own time if necessary; your reputation is eventually going to ride on this project and it will always be tainted with your predecessor's chaos if not rebuilt. TinMan
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How to continue a chaos project? I've got to continue a project missing documentation and comments. The former author has left the company ( the best thing he has done for the company ). His Knowledge of OOP was quite low. It is not possible to persuade the boss to give up and make a totally new start on this project. So I have to renew the most problematic part. Its the communication via RS232 to an Epson Robot-controller. Besides, its a Borland 3.0 project. Can anybody give some hints how to continue a chaotic software? :| Friedrich
Having had recent experience of trying to sort out a "chaotic" project, I can suggest the following. Does the project have a functional specification at all. If it does then at least you know what the project is supposed to do. If not, sit down with your boss and find out what the project is supposed to do. Write it down and then get the boss to check it. Next, go through the code and see if it matches the specification that your boss gave you. If not go back and ask him which is right, the spec or the code. Update the spec to match his answers. Once you've got a functional spec, you'll have a better chance of resolving the project. Next turn your functional spec into a design. Work out what classes and functions you'll need to implement the spec. Once you have these worked out, go through the existing code and copy the code which you can reuse into your projects classes. Write whatever code is missing and hopefully the project has been turned around. It's a back door restart but making use of any of the work that has gone on before that you can. Hope this is of some use, Michael :-)
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How to continue a chaos project? I've got to continue a project missing documentation and comments. The former author has left the company ( the best thing he has done for the company ). His Knowledge of OOP was quite low. It is not possible to persuade the boss to give up and make a totally new start on this project. So I have to renew the most problematic part. Its the communication via RS232 to an Epson Robot-controller. Besides, its a Borland 3.0 project. Can anybody give some hints how to continue a chaotic software? :| Friedrich
hehe, I think all programmers have been here. I work for a game-programming company and game-programmers are not very good creating comments or explaining anything,... so the first thing I do when I start on a former project is to comment what is going on. I also change the way the code looks, this might sound strange but each programmer has there way of using indents and code alignment, by changing the code to your appeal makes it easier to understand. It's boring to do this change but I found it to help me a lot. Peter Marino ( IO Interactive ) Hitman2 will be even better!