Comments on: Yeah, Right. You Can Do It

By: Paul Rodman

Paul Rodman — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:09:48 +0000

I was hired to do a DOS to Windows port of a financial management software product (CAPTOOLS). It was mind-bogglingly complex. In the end I could not get my brain around the awful financial code or concepts, and just designed the thing so that the principal of the company could plug his g*dawful DOS code into my GUI framework, which worked “fine”. Never again.

By: Bob Keeney

Bob Keeney — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:51:05 +0000

Jeeze, words that make me run from any project: payroll, job costing, and anything with ‘tax’ in the description.

Anyone who says accounting is easy has never dealt with any of those three.

By: npalardy

npalardy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:34:58 +0000

@Tom Russell
First job I had was as a member of a team to write a payroll application for one of the largest companies in Canada
That took years and was constantly being updated to deal with changing requirements, banks, international payment processing etc etc
And it all hooked in to the job costing system which was ……

I ended up leaving that company and working elsewhere for several years then went back on contract to help review/fix my code for Y2K (fortunately there were very few changes required)
At that point I really did ask myself “WTF were you thinking” from time to time

And if you’d like to know how to beat drug testing I have these friends who …..

By: Tom Russell

Tom Russell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:42:09 +0000

If you really want to feel “sorry” for me….

It originally started out from some wannabe programmers who were lawyers, took object pascal and paradox tables….eventually rolled that into Delphi and are now in the process of converting it to java/flex for web based used.

And I’m getting drug tested per employer’s requirement:)

By: Bob Keeney

Bob Keeney — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:50:49 +0000

Tom, all I can say is, “I’m sorry.” My task with this accounting project was to implement payroll. No requirements of any sort and I had to do it as quick as possible. That means, of course, that I ended up writing it twice.

If I never touch a payroll application again it will be too soon….

By: Tom Russell

Tom Russell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:03:13 +0000

I agree. I work for the largest payroll processing company in the US and let me tell you….it’s very strenuous and frustrating trying to code a legacy app that’s so convoluted it literally gives me headaches. Any financial or accounting type of program is huge and cumbersome to work on.

By: Bob Keeney

Bob Keeney — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:17:36 +0000

npalardy :

I’ve come to really think twice, if not three times, before saying “That should be easy” since having started work for REAL.

I bet! The more complex a piece of software is, the harder it is to change. In the case of the RB IDE you’re dealing with a lot of intertwined legacy code that was based on the ability (or lack thereof), direction from management, and assumptions of developers that are no longer with the company. In most cases you can’t even go back to the original author and ask, “What the heck were you thinking!?” Norman, I don’t envy your position.

By: npalardy

npalardy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:47:57 +0000

I’ve come to really think twice, if not three times, before saying “That should be easy” since having started work for REAL.

By: Scott Steinman

Scott Steinman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:33:44 +0000

I could replicate this blog posting easily!

I think that the “I could do it better” attitude is just a reflection of frustration at seeing software products that could be improved or made less buggy but are not, either due to business priorities of the developers or just lack of resources. Yes, a product may have flaws, but the huge amount of effort expended to get the product’s positive features often goes unrecognized.