Musings on IT and programming

This is a loaded topic. Duplicated code can arise from multiple causes and has different forms that affect in subtle but damaging ways. Though not all duplication is bad per se but it depends in how it affects development processes. Some of these duplication are made by authors trying to cut corners or replicating the same work but on different parts of the system. Copy paste is rampant everywhere and it might be done on any project and technology for multiple reasons, it might be that html tags need to be repeated, SQL queries that have pretty similar structure with different values, CSS definitions on multiple files. The problem here is how to know this is happening and that it is negatively affecting the team. Files can be statically analyzed and have the abstract syntax tree compared with many tools, some of those can be plugged as checks to the CI/CD pipelines, but this will only give you a number that must be evaluated to know if it is on a harmful range or not. For a given langu...

 Sometimes you create a system that faces directly the end user and produces value on each interaction, sometimes it is something that is deeply buried in the back end but still has direct business value by performing actions directly involved with the value chain, other times it is a support mechanism that helps monitor either the business or the infrastructure and other times it is something that is so low level that it does not have a direct business impact but if it were to fail it would bring the business to it's knees. All of these systems have their own characteristics and way of life, what works on one of them might completely break another one. Also talking about some of those can be made almost naturally with somebody outside of the organization as is evident what they do; on the other hand others can only be understood by individuals that have in depth knowledge of the field where those systems are meant to live. It is very hard to draw the line where one type of system ...

So after my sabatic period I started to go to different job interviews (most of them thanks to my fellow colleages whom I can't thank enough) and after most of them I feel a little weird. Everyone tries to get the best people by every means possible but then somethin is quite not right. Maybe they ask wrong questions, ask for too much and are willing to give to little in return or just plain don't know what they want or what they need. Our field is filled with lots of buzzwords and it is obvious that some people manage to get jobs only by putting them on their résumé. Then there are some places where there is a bigger filter and filters out some of the boasters. But still it is a question of what do they really need and what questions are needed to weed out those that do not cover minimal aspects required by the job. Don't get me wrong, it is really hard to identify good developers on an interview. It seems that almost no one knows what to ask in order to get insights abo...

Projects exceed their estimates both in cost and time. Why? Bad estimation would be an initial thought. If you know your estimates will be off by a wide margin is it possible to minimize the range? Common practice dictates to get better estimates which means get the problem broken down to smaller measurable units, estimate each of them, aggregate results and add a magic number to the total estimate. What if instead of trying to get more accurate estimates we focused on getting more predictable work outcomes? What are the common causes of estimation failure: Difficult problem to solve / Too big problem to solve Problems in comunication Late detection of inconsistencies Underqualified staff Unknown. I'd wager that having underqualified staff is perhaps the most underestimated cause of projects going the way of the dodo. If a problem is too complicated why tackle it with 30 interns and just one senior developer? If it is not complicated but big enough why try to dumb it down a...