>I was shocked - this wasn’t some startup. This was one of the biggest companies in the world, known for their engineering culture.
My first interpretation is that the manager was overly concerned with optics. My second thought is that they saw the gap between the complexity of the solution and the simplicity of the code. Your spaghetti c…
>I was shocked - this wasn’t some startup. This was one of the biggest companies in the world, known for their engineering culture.
My first interpretation is that the manager was overly concerned with optics. My second thought is that they saw the gap between the complexity of the solution and the simplicity of the code. Your spaghetti code hinted at the complexity of the solution through its complication.
The insight that your manager may have had but not shared is that complex solutions come from simple components interacting elegantly, something that a layprogrammer would not have in mind when reading the code for the first time.
Obligatory car analogy: It's like an engine builder who's honed every component to exacting tolerances of fit and finish -- to the point where it will never need a rebuild -- only to have the designer of the car it's going into ask for blueprints of the already working engine.
>I was shocked - this wasn’t some startup. This was one of the biggest companies in the world, known for their engineering culture.
My first interpretation is that the manager was overly concerned with optics. My second thought is that they saw the gap between the complexity of the solution and the simplicity of the code. Your spaghetti code hinted at the complexity of the solution through its complication.
The insight that your manager may have had but not shared is that complex solutions come from simple components interacting elegantly, something that a layprogrammer would not have in mind when reading the code for the first time.
Obligatory car analogy: It's like an engine builder who's honed every component to exacting tolerances of fit and finish -- to the point where it will never need a rebuild -- only to have the designer of the car it's going into ask for blueprints of the already working engine.