Comments for trails, trials and travails

Comment on B-52s at the Ogden by Stacy S. Jensen

Stacy S. Jensen — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:42:00 +0000

I loved them when I was in college! And, as I recall, the Love Shack was playing as the doctor’s did the C-section. Seemed appropriate.

Comment on Train of thought on the simplicity of happiness by Mickey

Mickey — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000

I LOVED this. I had forgotten how amazing your writing was.

Comment on Train of thought on the simplicity of happiness by MrBill

MrBill — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:12:00 +0000

This was the best story I’ve read in weeks!

Comment on Apps I like to use by Otir

Otir — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:03:21 +0000

I like always seeing what apps my fellows in social media spheres are using. Of course, what I like most is when we use similar (which is the case here), and to read your motivations for doing so, and how you recommend them. Thanks for writing to round-up!

Comment on colorless: getting group photo sharing… or not by Norby

Norby — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:06:37 +0000

Yes, more flickr rant, please! -/\/

Comment on colorless: getting group photo sharing… or not by Jenny Spadafora

Jenny Spadafora — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:24:48 +0000

I suspect I’d share many of your feelings should you decide to post the Flickr rant.

Comment on colorless: getting group photo sharing… or not by Jenny Spadafora

Jenny Spadafora — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:24:06 +0000

Comment on 2011 New Year, new things by ysaw

ysaw — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:30:27 +0000

My experience with technical devt is that its not a simple problem. Inevitably older systems get more and more difficult to maintain. At some point everything needs a rewrite. However, as features were added over time the shear about of work required to do a rewrite becomes insurmountable…some projects I worked on at Yahoo! were aimed at addressing technical debt. This generally meant a complete rewrite. During the time the rewrite was in progress it was very difficult or impossible to add new features, resulting in a stagnant product for a year.One (huge) project tried to address this problem with two teams: one working on a rewrite, another continuing work on the old product. The consequence of this of course was that the rewrite team spent a considerable amount of time porting new features over to the new codebase, because the other team kept adding them. Anyway, no conclusion, I just think that its quite difficult to keep a product solid on the internet, where users want constant improvements. (Refactors/rewrites are invisible to the users for the most part)

Comment on 2011 New Year, new things by dopiaza

dopiaza — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:28:45 +0000

I think most, if not all, projects incur technical debt to some degree and it’s hardly ever managed in a responsible way. The combined pressures of time and budget mean it’s invariably just pushed to one side as something that doesn’t need dealing with right now. I’m as guilty as anyone else of adding to that debt, but it’s often the only way you can satisfy the conflicting requirements of required functionality vs timescale/budget. This debt is often poorly understood. When documenting systems, people invariably describe how things are done, but they tend to be less good at pointing out that some things weren’t done well. They don’t often document the ways in which the current design or implementation is deficient, highlighting the potential problems that may occur over time. Understanding the exact nature of the technical debt is a key part of being able to pay it back, but that knowledge is often not well documented and gets eroded over time. Eventually, the debt is forgotten – and then something breaks or needs rewriting – at which point things can get pretty messy. As you can probably tell, I spend a non-trivial amount of my time maintaining a couple of older systems that suffer from this kind of problem. Of course, I’m far from perfect. I too need to get better at documenting those design compromises that get made in the name of ‘meeting the deadline’ – those little ‘gotchas’ that will almost certainly get somebody one day. Perhaps that’s one for my 101in365 list…

Comment on 2011 New Year, new things by Mike Panchenko

Mike Panchenko — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 12:41:32 +0000

Technical debt was actually talked about amongst the engineers quite a bit, especially while Hammond was in charge. It was just never tackled in any systematic way. It’s something I’m very cautious of at my new position as well.Hope you have a better 2011 than 2010 – shouldn’t be too hard, it seems