Development Humor as Thought Provoking Material

While reading through one of the Visual Dataflex newsgroup posts last week I stumbled upon an exchange where some developers were talking about their preference to keep their machines “clean”, as in not installing programs which are not going to be used, but for one reason or another get “added” — something like the various shortcuts that appear after loading just about any commercial program these days –  tax software for instance:>)

Anyway, the following excerpt was just too good to not pass along.

“…But you see, I prefer a *really* clean machine.  Every day I change the harddrive and start by installing a fresh copy of Windows and (Enter preferred development environment).  I then empty the start menu and delete every single icon from the desktop… I then re-write all my applications from scratch before I quickly switch it off again and sink the entire thing into my bathtub filled with a 60-70% solution of isopropanol…”

Now, while the above is completely absurd I’d venture a guess that there have been a few times in our development life that we truly wished to accomplish the above and just start from scratch on a project — and that certainly describes my state over the past couple of weeks!  But then there is the following sobering response from another of the participants:

“…But, you see there is a flaw in that because no matter how many times you re-write it, it still going to have bugs. <g> …”

This little exchange seems to summarize what many of us dealing with development issues daily are faced with.  I’m also reminded of my original idea for this blog, to expose the issues developers are faced with and hopefully provide insight and perspectives into ways of working with those issues.  I actually do not recommend the above “bathtub” approach, even though it does sound appealing on this Monday morning!