

Your Code May Be Elegant - co_pl_te
http://omniti.com/seeds/your-code-may-be-elegant

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pif
_The ability to make those decisions, often mid-project, is what separates
veterans from rookies._

I know two kinds of veterans: the ones that grew up eating their own food,
a.k.a. maintaining their code over the years and following customers
complaints and unexpected specifications evolution, and the ones who were soon
magnified as writing software "that works" and immediately moved to
"enlighten" other projects, leaving the stinking pile to the "rookies".

 _... and you can reconcile the debt over time_

Honestly, has this ever happened to you? Technical debt too often ends up
being an always growing burden on the shoulders on the next developers who
have to touch the stinking pile with the business around asking: "Why is it
taking so long to code such a small modification? In the end, the applications
already WORKS!".

I agree that code has to respect time and money budget, but the budget must
respect the code, too! The biggest problem in our industry is that too many of
us have made non technical people believe that "with software, everything is
possible", just to have a project failing after another when the fairy tales
world crashes with reality.

As Alex put it: "We are practically the only industry where completion and
success are synonymous. If the foundation of a one-year-old home is crumbling
and its roof is plagued with leaks, would anybody actually call that a
success? Of course not! So why are the products we create – complex
information systems that should last at least fifteen years – be held to a
different standard?"
[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Could_Possibly_Be_Worse...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Could_Possibly_Be_Worse_Than_Failure_0x3f_.aspx)

