Software development question

[OakLeaf]

You might page Colby, don't think she's on TE much these days.

[Blueberry]

I asked my DH (who straddles research development and sys admining on research systems). He has nothing nice to say about agile - he says that's it's a management-loved fad, but that it has stayed longer than he thought it would. I read him your implementation and he said that it was (even worse) being implemented badly based on that description.

Lots of places have gone to it - he says - but there are some that haven't. He said research (and academia) may be places to look that haven't gone to it.

[Thorn]

Software developer. Currently work agile. In 30 years of software I've probably never really worked pure waterfall. Even when we were FDA certified we developed the software in a agile-ish manner and backfilled the documentation.

Is "all" software done Agile (not agile, but the processes associated with Agile -- Scrum, Kanban, etc. -- and yes, they are development processes just like waterfall is a development process)? No. But a significant portion is. There are significant benefits to Agile -- short development cycles let you explore options and get feedback on a regular basis; there are significant disadvantages to Agile -- short development cycles can result in hacked solutions if the team is not disciplined and there is no overarching architecture.

Now, about the "everybody does every role" nonsense (oh, wait, that was with my out-load typing). On the 2 formal Agile projects I've been on in the last 3 years, both quickly recognized that the mantra of "we all are developers, and testers, and ..." is nonsense. Our teams have dedicated testers, dedicated developers (some DB, some embedded, some UI, etc, but each with a focus), a dedicated BA (sometimes the PO is the BA -- POBA) and a dedicated ScrumMaster. Devs are responsible for unit testing, but the tester writes full end-to-end tests with each sprint and is responsible for the end-to-end testing.

OK, I've been rambling, but, quite frankly, yes, many more places are doing Agile, but there are many organizations that have made the recognition that developers don't think like testers and you need testers; likewise, a good BA is worth their weight in gold and can free up your developers to do just that -- develop quality software. Note major caveat -- the development team must be disciplined to write good software within a long-term vision/architecture or you end up with garbage software that probably doesn't get delivered on time.

More than happy to answer questions...like you after 30 years, I know that I am a developer (apparently a darn good one, but that's the opinion of managers and I don't trust managers) and I've pulled back many times from PM/management/etc roles. Just let me sling code, please. It makes me happy.

[shootingstar]

Very interesting.

I work closely with software developer. He sits beside me. We're part of a small project team. I do business analysis for internal client groups on business application needs on particular enterprise wide system and do user acceptance testing along with our client test users. Occasional times we've had some heated discussions simply because he didn't consider something as a developer which seemed patently obvious as a very basic business requirement. But then he isn't much involved in direct client contact....

Clearly we are organized more informally compared to some teams that you are part of, as very experienced developers.

I've had to take over wordsmithing screen user insructions to simplify, etc. One thing perhaps some of you can respond: It's super annoying when he names on user screens, certain attributes with underscore and names whole workflow segments with the damn underscore ie. AIM_Modify_3. Good grief...I think he's just being stubborn. I realize underscore provides super accuracy but that strikes one as...just a rougher looking product for the client.

The underscoring habit...is on the named attributes, even in automatic email alerts. To me, it feels a little dinosaur-like in terms of habit. We're paying him/his IT firm a lot of money. He has brought in some great expertise to our dept. but still..

Don't get me started on the report headers that he designs.

[smilingcat]

I've had to take over wordsmithing screen user insructions to simplify, etc. One thing perhaps some of you can respond: It's super annoying when he names on user screens, certain attributes with underscore and names whole workflow segments with the damn underscore ie. AIM_Modify_3. Good grief...I think he's just being stubborn. I realize underscore provides super accuracy but that strikes one as...just a rougher looking product for the client.

The underscoring habit...is on the named attributes, even in automatic email alerts. To me, it feels a little dinosaur-like in terms of habit. We're paying him/his IT firm a lot of money. He has brought in some great expertise to our dept. but still..

LOL. I'm sorry shootingstar. Underscore makes it clear that you are not talking about two variables or some odd function and a variable. Or if you are writing in LISP or HASKEL, you can have a named operator (something of a function) and apply it to a variable that follows it without having to encolse the variable in a parenthethis (something CPP, C++, C# generally would require.)

What used to get me annoyed is when multiple underscore is used.

I don't code for a living except for VHDL and occasional TCL so my exposure to the programming world is rather limited even though I used to know C, Pascal, Fortran, APL, SmallTalk, Assembly code for several processors.

[shootingstar]

LOL. I'm sorry shootingstar. Underscore makes it clear that you are not talking about two variables or some odd function and a variable. Or if you are writing in LISP or HASKEL, you can have a named operator (something of a function) and apply it to a variable that follows it without having to encolse the variable in a parenthethis (something CPP, C++, C# generally would require.)

What used to get me annoyed is when multiple underscore is used.

Well, I think it's pretty inelegant..in fact, it looks...stupid: This is on the user interface screens....for over 100 laypeople like myself who aren't programmers but are users (I'm a lead trainer and do look at user screen usability and navigation.)

[Crankin]

Wow, thankfully, there is a job for those who enjoy stuff like this... and I mean this sincerely, because if you were depending on people like me, the world would stop.

[smilingcat]

Well, I think it's pretty inelegant..in fact, it looks...stupid: This is on the user interface screens....for over 100 laypeople like myself who aren't programmers but are users (I'm a lead trainer and do look at user screen usability and navigation.)

Fields and text you see on the screen are just text not some variables. So your coder is being extremely lazy!! There is no excuse for using the actual variable name in the code to pop up on the user screen.

Pretty awful to look at screen full of actual variable name. with underscores, double colons and such.