Saturday 29 June 2019

Things I will never do again

Again reflecting on twenty years in the software development industry, there are a number of things I can be pretty certain I will never do again. Either because "we don't do things like that any more" or because I will simply refuse. Sadly, it's often the latter!

In no particular order:

  • Work on a codebase with tens/hundreds of thousands of lines of code and no unit tests
  • Deploy production code to a Windows Server that faces the Internet
  • Build production code on my development machine
  • Work alongside someone whose title is XML Architect
  • Use JBoss, or indeed any "Application Server"
  • Do meaningful work on a project without signing a contract and/or being paid for at least some portion of it
  • Have to wear a suit and tie
  • Have to log into Jenkins slave machines to delete files because they've run out of disk
  • Configure builds in Jenkins by tediously pointing and clicking
  • Work in a building in the centre of a big city, where an entire floor is devoted to hosting and running racks of servers, storage, switches etc
  • Have to ensure that a website works on a browser with JavaScript disabled because "accessibility"
  • Write code that has no tangible benefit to users, but will "game" an executive's KPIs in order to achieve a bonus