Subj : Re: Is well written code a rare species ? To : comp.programming From : Bob Day Date : Fri Aug 12 2005 11:36 pm "Phlip" wrote in message news:l79Le.625$UA1.508@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com... > Bob Day wrote: > >> Too bad. My talent is designing and developing. That's >> what I'm good at, and that's what I do. Why should I not >> play to my best talent? > > Too bad. Our customers are paying for feature X first, so we will deliver it > as soon as possible. Then we will go to work on feature Y. This is > _maintenance_, because we must maintain X so users can safely upgrade to Y. > > Oh, you say you are good at design? Well we have this old program you could > work on. Its behavior is all correct but the design sucks. Could you > preserve its existing behavior while improving its design so we can start > adding features to it again? That's the wrong place to start. First you need to write a fresh functional specification for the program that includes all of the features you want it to have, and how it should operate. Then you can work on a new design of the program. Then, having gone to all that effort, do a complete rewrite of the code. -- Bob Day http://bobday.vze.com .