Stephen Waterbury wrote:

> Paul McNett wrote:

>> Ed Leafe wrote:

>>> I've worked for many clients who made claims like "we will never need more than one phone number per customer" or "part numbers will never be more than 4 places" or "640K will be enough for anyone". (OK, that last one wasn't from one of my clients!).

>> It's become a running joke between myself and my principle contact at my main client.

>> They keep constraining what I do based on what they think will get the job done

>> faster (more cheaply). ...

>>

>> I get the job done pretty quickly and it works well. We maintain it and enhance it

>> over the years as needs change and business rules flex with the times. ...

>>

>> There are many such examples in my client relationships. For this one client, I make

>> a point of finding the original email where she says "we'll never need this" and

>> replying to it with a wink. But she still never learns. ;)

>

> In fairness to such clients (and to ourselves as well), the delicate balance between

> efficiency/simplicity/cost-effectiveness and extensibility/flexibility/good architecture

> is one of the most difficult aspects of software development, and one of the reasons

> experienced developers are worth their salt -- that indefinable thing called

> "engineering judgment" has some subtle aspects and comes through hard

> lessons. It's also one of the reasons why reading/maintaining code is so much

> harder than developing/writing it in the first place -- which accentuates

> one of the strengths of Python: *clarity* (of course it's possible to write

> obfuscated, spaghetti Python code, but Python makes clarity relatively easy).

I know, it is always a little fuzzy where to draw the line between puritanism and

pragmatism. I don't mind getting paid to be the ultimate decider (or at least the

presenter of all the choices).

> Happy New Year, Paul and Ed -- hope to see you at PyCon! :)

Happy New Year too, Stephen! Glad to know you'll be attending PyCon and I look

forward to seeing you there.

Paul

_______________________________________________

Post Messages to: Dabo-users@leafe.com

Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/dabo-users

Searchable Archives: http://leafe.com/archives/search/dabo-users

This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/4B3D0A65.2020101@ulmcnett.com