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From: linda@rtech.rtech.com (Linda Mundy)
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Schedule and budget are secondary
Message-ID: <3829@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 16 Oct 89 19:52:14 GMT
References: <16168@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> <6693@hubcap.clemson.edu> <3807@rtech.rtech.com> <16202@vail.ICO.ISC.COM>
Reply-To: linda@rtech.UUCP (Linda Mundy)
Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
Lines: 43

In article <16202@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
>linda@rtech.rtech.com (Linda Mundy) writes about my comment that one hard-
>to-pin-down aspect of new-code quality might be:
>> >..."must be able to
>> >survive the next five years of changes, to meet new needs, hacked in by
>>                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >bored second-string maintenance programmers..."  ...
>>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>She says:
>> Dick, I really agreed with the main points of your article, making the above
>> remark come as a surprise.  Not picking you in particular, but this is
>> such a common attitude towards maintenance programmers, I thought it might be
>> appropriate as a topic of discussion in its own right...
>
>I agree with Linda's sentiments.  Now, to be clear about why I said what I
>did:  It IS a common attitude toward maintenance programmers.  It's an
>unfortunate, stupid, misdirected attitude.  Not only do I NOT agree with
>it; it makes me angry.  BUT it's there, and has to be reckoned with.  In
>other words, I pointed out that quality software needs to survive being
>hacked over by bad maintenance programmers not because maintenance SHOULD
>be done that way, but because it WILL be done that way, in all likelihood.
>You have to make the software a little hardier than it should need to be
>in order to survive what it will be put through.
>
>Maybe I should also have been careful with the wording so that it would
>have been clear that I meant (second-string) (maintenance programmers), as
>opposed to (second-string maintenance) programmers.
>
Well your main point remains valid, i.e. that one needs to think about 
future maintenance/enhancement when coding something.  The phrase quoted
above just jumped out at me -- like a red flag in front of a bull -- and
demanded comment...

>-- 
>Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
>   ...No DOS.  UNIX.


-- 
"Who are you to tell me to question authority?"

Linda Mundy	{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!linda