LXer: To Cut Code and Other Pet Peeves
 

Published at LXer:

It finally happened. Someone finally said it. I was attending a recent talk by a nameless major speaker in charge of a large Health IT organization. I had to get up and walk out on the speaker. I'm not normally one to get up and walk out on people in a huff, but long ago I made a contract with myself that if anyone uttered 2 fateful words again I was going to get up and walk out. Those two words are:

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Walking out was an over-reaction, but I can understand what provoked it. Senior managers here don't see a process, they just see the end result and assume it comes out complete in a brain dump.

As an example, I recently had some problems getting a Broadcom NIC talking to the network for our new CVS server. A passing project manager suggested that I put windows on the box, install visual sourcesafe and import the code (about 250,000 lines + history) into it. He figured I could do that on my weekend so his team could access it by the live date.

I ended up finding the answer here (surprise, surprise!), tested using DHCP, switched to fixed IP, got it working and had my weekend off. I'm no rocket scientist, but I do know how to use a methodical process to analyse a problem, rather than trivialising it with terms like "cutting code"