10,000 Foot Developer

Have you ever known someone like this?  Maybe it was a child:

“Well, I was making tomato soup and I saw the bananas sitting there, and thought they’ll just go to waste.  So I sliced them up in the soup!  Then, remembering I had some cheese and sausage and pickled herring left from that party — I threw them in, and also the last of those brownies from the office meeting.”

Yum.  That’s gotta be some great tomato soup.

If the goal was to make tomato soup . . . it was quite missed by the misapplication of ingredients.  Sliced bananas don’t work well in everything.

Mountain Bikes

Recently I was looking for a rear cargo carry rack for my mountain bike.  For the winter, I have mounted some monstrous tires to float over the snow and grip some ice.  Monstrous.  I also have the need of carrying some cargo so I started to look for a bike rack that bolts onto the rear.  I can’t find one.  I looked at maybe 10 models, even very expensive ones.  None provide the clearance on the giant snow tire or meet the specifications of my particular bike.  None.

One company I talked to suggested this: “Why don’t you just use a smaller tire, then the rack will fit.”

To which I responded: “Thanks, but that would defeat the whole purpose of the snow tires!”

So basically the guy suggested I add sliced bananas to my soup, ignoring the whole requirements of what I need, just to make one little thing work.

So — I made something myself.

Misapplication of Sliced Bananas in Technology

This kind of scenario has so many equivalencies in the tech world I’m making a second pot of coffee just to think about them!

Off the top of my head, I’ve found sliced bananas in these situations:

• Tooling.  For some reason a lot of places lock down tooling.  One contract I worked at wanted high quality graphics, but wouldn’t give me anything close to Photoshop to create and edit them! I couldn’t even install my own license on my work machine, so I did it on my notebook offsite.  Else — use the company standard “pixel paint.”  Dear god.
• Features.  Hey — Powerbuilder worked pretty good in 1998 right?  So why not use the same usability documents for a web app?  (This is a true story . . . )
• Methodology.  You knew I was going there!  If we have all those Agile tools let’s use them!  In fact, let’s retrofit the project INTO Agile that’ll make it . . Agile.  It my not get done but who cares.

Recently the methodology sliced banana has been rearing its ugly head up everywhere.  I have been talking around and reading sites etc. and it looks like a lot of the rigid agile stuff has been falling to the wayside.  So the providers of it are trying to do anything to sell it.   For instance, I have talked to several places that talk about TDD and how important it is but barely anyone uses it.  TDD is a sliced banana, definitely.  Or what about top-down agile?  This is where all the projects info is put into an Agile tool with the intent of making a dashboard for upper management.  But — once this is rooted in upper management the very “Agile” nature of the project is scuttled because if there’s a problem, it can’t be changed.  Another sliced banana.

Features has me thinking too.  A lot of places that don’t even know their business model want uber-flexible frameworks with high amounts of functionality.  Well, I’ve learned something from mountain bikes, kayaks, other objects like iPhones and iPads.  Things that do a lot of stuff  do not do one thing outstandingly.  Sorry but that’s just how it is.  A super fancy UI (function=eye appeal) is harder to change quickly.  A broad domain model takes more time to extend.

Tooling too.  You want to have it all?  Get the IntelliJ IDE BUT it costs money and is a less flexible environment.  So you like basic editing/quick turn around  time?  Use VIM and the command line; but forget about good debugging.  Some people need a Cuisinart, sometimes the task needs a Cuisinart; or sometimes a person can do everything with a good knife.

Well anyway I think I have made my point.  Most of us would prefer to spend our time on just making simple good ole’ tomato soup when that’s what’s needed.  And its surprisingly difficult to make in the software world.