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Cowboy Engineers in the Software Industry

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 02 2014, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the was-it-much-harder-in-my-day? dept.

shabadoo writes:

"Will software engineering always be a cowboy's game? Or is it just a case of when you're a passionate expert the pimples stand out more clearly. This guy has clearly had enough. His vents are amusing, but also raise some good points about the state of the industry."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @07:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @07:30AM (#9938)

    The people he's complaining about don't sound like cowboys to me. They sound like hipsters.

    The cowboy bangs out 10,000 lines of C in a week without documentation because it was the only way to get the demo done for the VCs. The C works well enough for the demo. Ultimately it becomes a decent codebase. The cowboy hates the waterfall and big organizations. The best thing for the cowboy is to get the company started, then educate maintainers and move on.

    The hipster "collaborates" for several weeks about what kind of scripting language should be used for the project before writing any code. If/when any code is produced it runs unacceptably slow. This can be fixed by throwing more hardware at it because "developers are expensive". Analysis of the hipster code will likely turn up something like an exponential algorithm for which a linear solution is available. It's all good because we used the latest and the greatest though. Throw more hardware at it. How does the pork-pie hat look? I'm wearing it to $ScriptingLanguage Con.

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by L5GwL on Monday March 03 2014, @09:28AM

    by L5GwL (1751) on Monday March 03 2014, @09:28AM (#9959)

    To paraphrase:
    "The sweeping generalisations made in the article miss the mark. In contrast, my sweeping generalisations are much more accurate."

  • (Score: 2) by regift_of_the_gods on Monday March 03 2014, @02:37PM

    by regift_of_the_gods (138) on Monday March 03 2014, @02:37PM (#10048)

    The hipster "collaborates" for several weeks about what kind of scripting language should be used for the project before writing any code. If/when any code is produced it runs unacceptably slow. This can be fixed by throwing more hardware at it because "developers are expensive". Analysis of the hipster code will likely turn up something like an exponential algorithm for which a linear solution is available. It's all good because we used the latest and the greatest though. Throw more hardware at it. How does the pork-pie hat look? I'm wearing it to $ScriptingLanguage Con.

    Too funny. But true

  • (Score: 1) by cafebabe on Monday March 03 2014, @03:36PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Monday March 03 2014, @03:36PM (#10078) Journal

    How does the pork-pie hat look? I'm wearing it to $ScriptingLanguage Con.

    Ok, so pork-pie hats are in but is hipster mouse taxidermy still fashionable?

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