Smoke and Mirrors

This was a conversation with one of our developers. Let’s call him “rAndy” to protect his name.

Dev: Hey Rick, I have a simple solution to this problem. It would only take me a few minutes.
Rick: Could you add this one thing on it? The client needs to access it this way.
Dev: Ok I’ll check.
[10 mins pass]
Dev: Can I rebuild the ark? Noah did it and it only took him a couple years, what with gathering up all the animals and what-not.
Rick: Uh, what?
Dev: I want to redesign this thing. See it’s written all wrong.
Rick: Uh, what?
Dev: It would be simple, I’ve already got it all mapped out.
Rick: Uh, maybe next year. Can you check on the simple solution?
Dev: Aw, do I hafta?
Rick: Yes. Can you just check on this one thing? I know it doesn’t work now - how hard would it be to change.
Dev: Wha?
Rick: I wrote the code, I know it’s in there.
Dev: Show me.
Rick: Ok here it is.
Dev: Ok. Looking at it now.
[5 minutes pass]
Dev: I figured it out. It doesn’t work that way now.
Rick: I knew that already. HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO CHANGE.
[10 minutes pass]
Dev: Real hard. Sorry, no way we can do that.

For the love of Pete! If this change is hard, how hard would his redesign have been

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.