BJCooperIT
Programmer
I am basically a tree person. I get lost in the details, which is to say, I am busy tending the leaves while others are looking out for the forest. There is a another thread regarding the most serious ethical issues faced by IT professionals and my question is not as lofty. I am asking for your ethical pet peeves. Not the earthshaking moral dilemmas but the little rights and wrongs that drive you crazy. ![[shocked]](/data/assets/smilies/shocked.gif "[shocked] [shocked]")
One of my high ranking personal gripes is DOCUMENTATION. Yes, I agree, it sometimes is a PITA to write. I know some coders perceive it as a waste of time. It is however an important legacy to leave good quality documentation. Sometimes I am called back to do some additional enhancements or bug fixes (yes...I do make mistakes) for a previous client. I go back into code I barely remember writing let alone remember the business rules the code is supporting. I am usually shocked to learn I would be lost without the liberal comments I left sprinkled around. Without the system documentation I wrote would I be able to tell the user how to achieve that complicated procedure run once in a blue moon? Definitely not. If I need the documentation for my own code, then user needs it even more.
My position is that I am a paid professional and when I code an application, the documentation is an integral part of the whole and it is ethically required. Is it acceptable that the documentation is of a poor quality and thus useless? IMHO, absolutely not. How is it that so many professionals deem it appropriate to leave unintelligible bits of information scribbled on napkin scraps, jumbled instructions typed at 3:00am that make no sense, or worse yet nothing at all? I am not just referring to a programmer documenting a program here. I am including most IT deliverables - networks, applications, security, and ________ (you fill in the blank).
Assuming I posess the necessary intellect and skills, if I read a manual and cannot figure out how the system functions then time and money were squandered on useless typing. If a technical person cannot glean information from it, how did the author expect the users to use it as a resource?
Case in point. My users bought a software package. The documentation is sub-standard. No, that is too kind, quite frankly it is crap. Even the project manager from the vendor admits their documentation is absolutely awful. My observation is that the person who wrote it was a detailed technical person who has no concept of how to present information to non-techs. Reminds me of the line from the movie Beetlejuice: "It reads like stereo instructions". Even that is giving it too much credit.
If documentation is not provided or is sub-standard then my feeling is that an ethical boundary has been violated.
OK, what drives you up a wall? Rants acceptable.
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000
[sup]When posting code, please use TGML for readability. Thanks![sup]
One of my high ranking personal gripes is DOCUMENTATION. Yes, I agree, it sometimes is a PITA to write. I know some coders perceive it as a waste of time. It is however an important legacy to leave good quality documentation. Sometimes I am called back to do some additional enhancements or bug fixes (yes...I do make mistakes) for a previous client. I go back into code I barely remember writing let alone remember the business rules the code is supporting. I am usually shocked to learn I would be lost without the liberal comments I left sprinkled around. Without the system documentation I wrote would I be able to tell the user how to achieve that complicated procedure run once in a blue moon? Definitely not. If I need the documentation for my own code, then user needs it even more.
My position is that I am a paid professional and when I code an application, the documentation is an integral part of the whole and it is ethically required. Is it acceptable that the documentation is of a poor quality and thus useless? IMHO, absolutely not. How is it that so many professionals deem it appropriate to leave unintelligible bits of information scribbled on napkin scraps, jumbled instructions typed at 3:00am that make no sense, or worse yet nothing at all? I am not just referring to a programmer documenting a program here. I am including most IT deliverables - networks, applications, security, and ________ (you fill in the blank).
Assuming I posess the necessary intellect and skills, if I read a manual and cannot figure out how the system functions then time and money were squandered on useless typing. If a technical person cannot glean information from it, how did the author expect the users to use it as a resource?
Case in point. My users bought a software package. The documentation is sub-standard. No, that is too kind, quite frankly it is crap. Even the project manager from the vendor admits their documentation is absolutely awful. My observation is that the person who wrote it was a detailed technical person who has no concept of how to present information to non-techs. Reminds me of the line from the movie Beetlejuice: "It reads like stereo instructions". Even that is giving it too much credit.
If documentation is not provided or is sub-standard then my feeling is that an ethical boundary has been violated.
OK, what drives you up a wall? Rants acceptable.
Code:
select * from Life where Brain is not null[sup]When posting code, please use TGML for readability. Thanks![sup]
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