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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:13PM (17 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:13PM (#682740) Journal

    My personal workflow:
    Design Phase - (General idea of what the program should do, User Interface design on paper, and what tools to use. )
    Rough Draft - (UI prototype, partial implementation of underlying code.)
    Programming - (Flesh out the UI, Finish the coding.)
    *Beg for Artistic help - (I suck at art. Usually involves bribing the wife. Sometimes includes help with story, etc.)
    (Rinse and Repeat previous steps until I am pleased with the program.)
    Release - (Use it for whatever I'm going to, and / or send it to friends.)

    This is the model that we were taught in our Software Engineering course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process#Methodologies [wikipedia.org] So, I guess that would be top down, but I'm pretty sure I've never adhered to a particular methodology.

    "Waterfall development
    Main article: Waterfall model
    The activities of the software development process represented in the waterfall model. There are several other models to represent this process.

    The waterfall model is a sequential development approach, in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through several phases, typically:

    ...

    The waterfall model is a traditional engineering approach applied to software engineering. A strict waterfall approach discourages revisiting and revising any prior phase once it is complete. This "inflexibility" in a pure waterfall model has been a source of criticism by supporters of other more "flexible" models. It has been widely blamed for several large-scale government projects running over budget, over time and sometimes failing to deliver on requirements due to the Big Design Up Front approach. Except when contractually required, the waterfall model has been largely superseded by more flexible and versatile methodologies developed specifically for software development. See Criticism of Waterfall model."

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:17PM (5 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:17PM (#682742) Journal

    I forgot to insert Testing in there somewhere, but I guess that's the Rinse / Repeat step. Sometimes send to others to test, too.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 22 2018, @07:04PM (4 children)

      Testing is what users are for after you've put the code in production.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:26AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:26AM (#682898)

        Found the Microsoft code monkey.

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Friday May 25 2018, @02:02PM (1 child)

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday May 25 2018, @02:02PM (#684013) Journal

          Found the Microsoft chief engineer.

          FTFY

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:13PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:13PM (#685897)

            Found the Microsoft chief bean counter.

            Note: Microsoft has lots of beans to count.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:37PM (#685863)

        "I don't always test my code, but when I do it's in production"

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:42PM (10 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:42PM (#683208)

    My actual workflow usually has a waterfall phase to get to what the agile folks like to call "minimum viable product", and then there's a switch into an agile / iterative system where there are steady improvements on a working product. I'm not formal about any of that, nor do I describe that process in any great detail to my customers, I just take a new assignment with a message of "I'll have something to show you in X weeks", where X is some reasonable time frame shorter than the actual project schedule, waterfall up something that looks like what they were asking for, and then we start the iterative cycles until everybody is happy with the results. So far that's worked well.

    But then again, my situation organizationally speaking leaves me largely immune from management interference, which makes things a lot easier.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:09PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:09PM (#683757) Journal

      That's how we roll.

      The great thing about standards is there's so many to choose from!

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 26 2018, @12:04AM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 26 2018, @12:04AM (#684272) Homepage

      Yup, ugly quick-and-dirty monoliths and then fix it and make it more object-oriented incrementally. You need something barely functional for tech demos if it's external, or you need shit prototyped quick if internal. Outside of designing databases (and school bullshit) I've never used even block diagrams before starting the ghetto-code.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:21AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:21AM (#685384)

        ghetto-code, well written, is a great basis to draw a block diagram from. In my industry, there are requirements to provide block diagrams for certain aspects of the system... some I pull out of -thin air- before starting anything, others are best generated from however the code finally took shape.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:18AM (6 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:18AM (#685382)

      my situation organizationally speaking leaves me largely immune from management interference

      Unbelievable. Good for you if true, but management always manages to interfere with my group's productivity at least a couple of times a year, no matter where I work it seems.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:59PM (#685832)

        Unbelievable. Good for you if true

        3 years ago, I was the only programmer in the organization I was working for, and I was able to within a couple of months demonstrate that leaving me to my own devices would get them good results. That job was a flexible-enough contract position that I took the time to set up my own software business on the side and am now independent, with enough satisfied customers that no single customer could completely ruin me. Now that my management is me, there's really no interference at all.

        You'd be amazed how far reasonable technical competence can get you when the people paying you have never experienced it before.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:07PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:07PM (#685893)

          Sounds great, any contract work I have encountered has either been too demanding (i.e. move cross country and work on-site for 6-9 months, or local "needing" you "full time plus overtime" for an unspecified period), or too flaky and underfunded - like $10K chunks of funding without any assurances that the next $10K will be available regardless of the results produced. The time I might have built a multi-customer base like you describe, I was in a University town and all the businesses were working on the expectation of getting lucky and hiring "great kids straight out of school" for the price of incompetent fresh-outs. I actually interviewed with one shop where the manager came to a point and said: "O.K. - I want you here, next question: what are your salary expectations?" I told him what I was currently making, he nodded and told me that he was the highest paid programmer there and he made half what I do... and that I should look to another nearby city if I wanted that kind of money - advice I ended up following within a couple of years.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:34PM (1 child)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:34PM (#685858)

        Good for you if true, but management always manages to interfere with my group's productivity at least a couple of times a year, no matter where I work it seems.

        Depending on what your floor for "interference" is, sounds fantastic.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:00PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:00PM (#685885)

          I'm pretty happy where I am, not looking to move. I have definitely been in worse places.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:15PM (1 child)

        That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've had days where someone interrupting my coding to tell me the building was on fire and I needed to get to the nearest exit would have had me wanting to choke them. This isn't an especially rare trait in code monkeys, thus management.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:15PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:15PM (#686272)

          Some people get their dopamine from sex, some get it from adrenaline, or drugs, or pay-back / power tripping,

          Code monkeys get it from converting concepts into working code.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]