Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

 
 
On Tue, 26 Nov 2024, rbowman wrote:
 

On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 13:17:08 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:
>

Yep, exactly.  If they can be given instructions that match their "lego
brick set" they can snap something together.  Ask them to do anything
that requires creativity or research and understanding, and you get back
a turd that has had hours of polishing applied.

>
The holy grail for management is a design methodology that gets adequate
results from a workforce of varying aptitudes. Particularly for larger
corporations you'll get a normal distribution, a few very good, a few
completely useless, and a lot of mediocrity. That's what you have to work
with.
>
What I've seen over the years is a company will luck out, get a better
than average distribution, and achieve success. Whatever they're doing is
taken as an example of the right way and copied mechanically. Top down
structured programming, agile, devops, and so forth have their day.
>
TI lucked out in the '70s and used something they called 'matrix
management' that became the new Wunderkind. The '80s brought 'In Search of
Excellence'.
>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence
>
Good money was made from book sales and training sessions from independent
snake oil salesmen preaching the gospel. The company I worked for had one
of the sessions. Not too many of the 'excellent' corporations are around
today.
>
About 10 years ago the company I now work for had a 'pair programming'
session. That was hilarious. The 'experts' were only familiar with Apple
machines and other than the one they brought there wasn't an Apple in the
building. Having been through required attendance things before my team
carefully stayed to the back of the room where we could slink away and get
back to business.
>
I'm sure the next methodology will wrap itself around AI, spin off
training companies, and mostly fail to deliver on the promises.
>
>

 
Ahh... and today you have agile snakeoil salesmen! I heard a story from
the girlfriend of one of my consultants. Her company, a computer game
company, hired an "agile coach" who was workshopping away like a madman.
 
One programmer said... "but this agile thing, it seems to me like it will
become less efficient and more work, that's bad", the snakeoil salesman
responded "I hear you and appreciate your concern, but if agile makes
things worse, you're not doing it right, and that's why we are here"! ;)

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something

Agile, at least to the extent I've seen it being actually practiced so
far, is of little benefit to the actual programmers, and adds burden
(more daily meetings for the 'scrum' and sprint periodic meetings for
the finale, retro, planning, etc.  meetings).

The one thing it does provide is give management more frequent feedback
that "something's happening" so they can feel cozy that their budget
funds have been used sensibly (i.e., CYA for managers).

But given that most 'enterprise' execution of 'agile' tends to, in the
limit, approach an "agile waterfall" type of arrangement, the
'wonderful promise' of agile of quick turnaround for bug fixes and more
speedy accumulation of incrememtal improvements that deploy every
sprint tends to get lost in the surrounding bureaucracy tarpit that
holds everything else back.