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Why Do I Do It?

Entry 995, on 2009-04-23 at 22:37:47 (Rating 1, Activities)

I have been an IT professional and have created computer programs, web sites, and databases as a job for many years now (more years than I really want to remember) so you would think by now that I would know what is good practice and what isn't.

For example, you would think that making last minute changes to how a critical part of a program worked the day before it was due for installation for the user to test would be considered a bad idea, but yes, that's what I'm doing now!

When I'm working on a major project I often come up with "brilliant" ideas at the most unexpected times. I figure it will only take an hour or two to add that new feature so why not? Of course, it usually takes a lot longer than I initially figured, plus the new feature often has some weird and unexpected interaction with an existing function which stops working.

In the end the system usually ends up being better as a result of these great ideas because in most cases they generally are good ideas. But I know when I demo this system tomorrow there will be a few things which unexpectedly don't work.

But that's why this is a beta! The beta designation is an excuse for all sorts of poor functionality, slow performance, and missing features for other people's software so why shouldn't it be the same for mine!

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