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On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:26:01 -0800 |
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Grant <emailgrant@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> >> Likewise for debugging the kdepim mess when it was already working |
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> >> well in the old kde. What ARE they thinking? Reminds me of our US |
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> >> Congress, all advertising and no product. |
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> > |
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> > kdepim devs are just making a simple classic mistake that's |
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> > been made over and over and over again. Developers do not learn from |
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> > history, every time this mistake is made the team doing it thinks |
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> > *they* will be different. |
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> |
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> What is that classic mistake? Is it the shark jumping thing? |
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No, the mistake is the mistakes that are always made on the second |
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big project. You'd have to read "The Mythical ManMonth" to truly do it |
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justice (it's a really good book for developers btw), but in a nutshell |
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it goes like this: |
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For your first big project, you will proceed very slowly and carefully |
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and not take on too much, as you know you know nothing. You will |
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probably make a project that does one thing and does a decent job of it. |
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Enter the second project. Buoyed by the success of the first, most devs |
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will try and build something that is waaaaaaaaaay beyond their |
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capabilities - I mean, how hard can it be right? It will over-reach, be |
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unbuildable and timeframe estimates will be bat-shit crazy insane. |
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The attrition rate of second big projects is rather large. |
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Enter the third project. Humbled by the experience of the second and |
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still feeling quietly (and realistically) confident by the first, most |
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devs will settle down to something useful, of wide scope and still |
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achievable. |
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This same rule seems to apply to almost every project a bunch of humans |
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could tackle. |
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So back to KDEPIM. The state of that project, the amount of bugs it |
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has, the attitude of the devs, the state of the migrator scripts, the |
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way Akonadi can suddenly go nuclear on you and eat your kittens, the |
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mysterious disappearing mails from imap stores, and more, all of these |
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things point straight to second project syndrome. The devs bit off way |
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more than they can chew and now it's biting them back. |
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But it can be fixed. All it needs is a smart leader with the balls to |
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nuke all the crap code, put up with the inevitable whinging, and get |
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the project back on track with a set of realistic goals. This might |
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well mean chucking all of Akonadi away and admitting to themselves that |
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they must stick with lots of flat files for a while longer. |
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> |
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> - Grant |
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> |
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> |
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> > This is their second big project - the most dangerous one a dev will |
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> > ever work on. Frederick P. Brooks has it all covered since the 70s. |
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> |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |
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