Development : Managers Trust your Developers

I have been so busy, I'm deep in the middle of a new system development with work, but as a personal side line I'm also completely re-engineering a different system, you know when you've worked on something or in a field as long as I have it becomes second nature to want to do things your own way... So I've been doing just that.

I picked a coding standard & style, I've stuck to it, I've pulled in SDL and Boost, it's all C++ and it's around 100x faster than the original system and amazingly more simple to access.

The problem, the boss doesn't want it, he doesn't trust it.  More importantly he doesn't trust me.

My previous boss has seen the system he's gobsmacked, his opinion was that it was exactly what was needed four or five years ago, and to have done it alone with no support in parallel with my real daily work just blew him away.

So what was my current bosses argument?  Well, it's one I can't counter, his point is that the current system I want to replace has been out on the market with real customers for years, nearly twelve years in fact, and I ported it to cover five different platforms.  He's right, it is, it has been, and it will be again, but that doesn't make the system any good.  All it lets a manager in his position do is quantify the risk versus reward, and I can not argue or knock him for that.

However, what I can knock is when you have an employee, like myself, who lives and breaths this technology, who writes books and blogs on the topic, and they've worked for you for 14 years... They're investment in the product is vastly more than the product risk for taking up the new system, especially when the new system would only go to trusted customers for trials, it would not immediately go out to the full estate of customers.  You reduce that risk you've presented drastically, there is less risk, but the reward for introducing that new system is vast, acceptance of it is equally as likely as giving customers the original old system in a new skin.

They are 100% compatible by the way, content for one works on content for the other, they work in the same sequence and order, they are the same except the underlying code is vastly better in one and a squelchy pile of over cooked spaghetti in the other...

So, to managers out there, the world over, yes evaluate your risks, but your developers are a huge component of that risk, if you have a good one, trust them when they do 40+ days of leg work on something, they're not doing it just for their own sake, they're doing it because of a driving need.

Google Goofs with Plus

I'm an avid YouTube watcher, I enjoy many topics, but the number of the subscriptions I have whom are mentioning the Google+ comments bullshit on YouTube... We have...

Jingles... "It sucks doesn't it"

Boogie (aka Francis)... "I tried to put up with this new Google+ bullshit"

Dave (aka EEVBlog)... "Hello McFly... Hello... I'm approving... It's retarded... It just doesn't work"

This debacle is just on going... I personally hate the system, they've removed functionality I enjoy, such as the addition of a time into the comment so you can link what you're saying to a specific moment, then it used to allow me to reply to a comment, right now I don't know how to address a comment to a specific recipient.

And then the "Real name" thing.. I've seen Hitler posting... And the big JC... Santa and fucking Gandalf... Like he's not busy enough... it's like What the fuck!?!!?

This is Google's biggest visible change ever, and its abigger flop than anything that they've had flop before.  I hate google+, I only use my google account for gmail and this blog, it happens they own YouTube so that's linked in there too, but I don't specifically use Google+... I like blogspot, and I like YouTube, and I used those services on their own merit.  The fact they're piggy backing Google+ on those more used, more popular interfaces says a lot, if Google+ was as all invasive and defined the social space then fine, but it doesn't, so to make it impact on YouTube is a pain in the back side, stupid.

And as that mad Aussie bloke says better... "this is just Evil".


Addendum, after writing this yesterday, Boogie has been back on camera, lets see him in action:

Another Addendum, I've made one reply to one message in the new system... Look what appears in my inbox linked to my YouTube account... This is new, it never did this shit before...

That's just an hour in my small inbox, on a small comment on one video, I usually post all over... And I went into my Video Manager area to look for my YouTube inbox... No, my YouTube inbox is gone, its sending messages out to my own personal e-mail... just swamping me in mails, I can't imagine how terrible this would be for a content maker.

And then I've spotted more issues with the new system itself... Like if someone has relied to a comment, you used to be able to click "Show Comment", so the new message could be linked back in a tree to the comment it was about, this is called a discussion, and its how we as humans converse...  Now however, you only get the name of the person you're replying to, and you click it and the site takes you to their profile page... Not to the comment... So the context which 90% of comments sit in has been lost, totally lost.

I'm beginning to really hate the new system, and I'm happy to see big contributors, like boogie standing up to this shit.