It could also be a double-edged sword. I've seen it happen more times than I can remember.
Management sets a clear deadline, we rush the code to get it done by its due date. Then the product sits there for months doing nothing while we're in between projects wasting time away. Half a year down the road we get asked for support because some things broke which would've been working fine had we taken the proper time to built them.
From personal experience, most businesses don't think in terms of maintenance and debugging. These are costs which can very quickly add up to way more than the saved development costs.
> Half a year down the road we get asked for support because some things broke which would've been working fine had we taken the proper time to built them.
This seems to be so common. Almost every project seems to break or have issues at some point and the excuse is always the same: oh we didn't have time to do it properly. It makes me wonder if that is indeed always the case.
This leads to a question... are there projects that are done in enough time so that they won't break?
I've made quite a few products that were ship-and-forget over the years. Every single time I had sufficient time to think about the architecture and focus on the simplicity of things.
This. Disbanding the IE team after "winning" the first browser war was a terrible mistake. IE fell behind technically, but they caught up again in recent years. However their reputation among web developers and even end users hasn't really recovered.
As an aside, a great way to anger an IE engineer is to remind them that the entire reason their team exists is because of Mozilla and Firefox. I truly believe that had Firefox not come out, the web browser winter would have continued until the rise of smart phones.
I don't quite follow your reasoning here. It's got a really bad reputation with devs and people "in the know," but for the average user turning on the computer, it's perfectly fine, and that has to count for something.
That's the part I find interesting - despite being good enough for all the major sites on the internet, they kept bumping up against cases where it didn't work. But I don't understand why they needed a new browser to fix that; the article implies that all it required was a change in focus.
Exactly, this is the thing people keep forgetting. IE has a market for people who don't change the default browser from their computers, and it's a good thing they are getting a better, modern browser (not that IE11 is bad, mind you).
If you think of the Browser-as-Operating-System, then building a legacy-free IE makes a lot of sense. That kind of OS development is right in Microsoft's wheelhouse and they need to do it to stay competitive if they want to continue to be a client-side application host.
If this Spartan team does a good job, then they'll brain drain the rest of Microsoft the way XBox did. Building a web browser from the ground-up in 2015 would be a pretty sweet project to work on. I'm nerd-salivating.
That's true. I so wanted to like the Windows Phone. I bought a Lumia 1520 and it was a beautiful piece of tech. And I like the default interface of the home screen (Metro works on a phone, not on desktop imho).
But .. then I tried to use the store to get apps and it was a desert. Or the things I could find, worked poorly.
That's the thing, it might well be on "mum's (next) tablet" (probably not phone).
There's a raft of really cheap (7/8/10 inch) Windows 8.1 tablets that are price competitive with their Android equivalents. At the moment they are running full Windows with an Intel Atom processor. From what I've read, these will all be capable of being upgraded to Windows 10 when release.
Spartan is going to be released for both Windows Phone 10 (or whatever they are calling it) in addition to Windows 10, from what I've read.
Was just this. In school you can listen, and be taught. But learning how to learn is an entirely different skill. Foundational knowledge is really important, but eventually you need to know how to pick up things on your own.
Understanding the learning process, and the process of seeking out relevant information is almost more important than being able to memorize text and lectures. If you can only be taught, that you rely on schooling. If you can learn, than your limits are only based on time :)
Linux [distributions] (because the Linux Kernel is fairly agnostic about use-cases) are constantly being developed and redeveloped. KDE5, Unity8+Mir, GNOME3, Cinnamon, MATE, etc... They're all aiming to be easy to use and powerful. They all have some distance to go but so do Windows and OSX.
Then there's the actual consumer-device market that Linux all but owns. Things like Tizen and Android and the dozens of frontends that the existing infrastructure makes super-simple to create a custom interface.
There is constant churn, making Linux more and more user-friendly.
I've got a side project. And chances are it will never make any real money. But I opted to do it because I know its a pain in the butt to make, and if I don't likely no one else will (or at least do a good job).
I worked as a contract engineer for several years and here is my take:
Typically in a contract relationship you have alot less obligations than hiring a salaried employee. At the same time, this person is using their valuable time towards your project. As a result of this, they usually ask for compensation which is agreed upon beforehand.
You agreed to a certain amount of compensation, and than chose not to pay. Sometimes contractors do not meet expectation, and I've seen this happen. But if you have already agreed upon milestones it is only appropriate to pay them at least up to the point at which you request they quit or fire them.
If you did not agree upon milestones (which a business with your funding should have.) You should still be paying him for the work done. Your disagreement over his work could cause his family to go hungry for a week. Such is the life of a contractor.
All in all, perhaps both of you performed without much regard to ethic. He did a shoddy job and you refused to pay. But your running the business and as a result have a lot more to lose from a bad image.
You mean as an employer I can't just use 'contractor' as a way to skirt paying payroll taxes, unemployment, workers comp, etc and then hire the cheapest dev I can find and refuse payment if the work isn't top notch? As far as I've been able to determine, as an employer I am entitled to software. I am entitled to workers who produce things that amplify the earnings of my company by an order of magnitude while paying just enough to keep the workers complacent. This is America, is it not?
What is the goal of this software? Ship now? MVP?
Are we trying to polish the software? Or just get it to work? Is it a prototype?
Some thoughts to take into consideration.