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0 pointsChrisMarshallNY1y ago0 comments

> replaceable people

Until that mindset changes, the disasters will keep coming.

Achieving true "replaceable people" is a major task. I have seen it done (properly), and suspect most folks on this board would be aghast at the compromises that need to be made. I didn't like it.

I managed a team of extremely experienced C++ engineers that were really hard to replace, so I did my best to keep them on board.

As to "artisan"? I don't really care what I'm called. I like coding, and I like writing really good UX.

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luckylion1y ago

Why do you think the mindset that everyone should be replaceable is wrong / leads to disasters?

I agree completely that it's not trivial and comes with its own trade-offs and side-effects, but when you achieve a good chunk of it, it brings a lot of flexibility, stability and peace of mind for everyone involved.

You can put more people on some task because it's not something only one person can do. You won't nose-dive when somebody leaves. And developers know that they can go on vacation and don't need to worry about what's going to happen to the rest of the team (I know that not everyone thinks like that, but in my experience enough people do).

ChrisMarshallNYOP1y ago

It's really a long topic, but the basic TL;DR, is that people are not interchangeable, unless you reduce the task to the lowest common denominator, and that means that we squander the talent of the most skilled, in order to cater to the least skilled. Basically, tell good coders to write bad code, because bad coders need to understand it.

We get "meh" results.

The issue is that everyone seems to be fine with "meh."

That's a shame.

The alternative is hire only good coders, and do what it takes to keep them around, and that's a really unpopular stance.

sfn421y ago

I'd say good code is easier to understand.

Things get at least as complex as they need to be. Some things are just hard, but most things are fairly simple. The difference between a good programmer and a bad one is that the latter will make the simple things look complicated and hard to understand.

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