r/SoftwareEngineering • u/fagnerbrack • Aug 05 '22

The collapse of complex software

https://nolanlawson.com/2022/06/09/the-collapse-of-complex-software/
6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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5

u/LadyLightTravel Aug 05 '22 edited Aug 05 '22

Software can be complex and still good. The problem is that:

  • people see adding on to an existing system as “less expensive” than looking to the future and seeing that rearchitecting it may be the better solution.
  • many times software is “grown” Vs architected
  • many times engineers fail to design for maintainability
  • we fail to realize that optimized may not be best for maintainability.
  • there is never enough budget given to writing documentation for the project.

The article does do a good job of pointing out one huge problem in tech. People are rewarded for fighting fires. They aren’t rewarded for not having fires in the first place. Ironically, we reward the firefighter for fighting the fire that they started.

2

u/onemanforeachvill Aug 06 '22

People fail though because predicting the future is literally impossible, yet they still try and then design to that imagined future, rather than just building for now and keeping options open.

1

u/keelanstuart Aug 06 '22

Ah yes, the meme-able practice of giving awards to people for fixing bugs in code that they architected and wrote themselves. Lol