That’s what everyone craves. That’s why lines of code is still seen as a useful measure in various quarters. That’s why we obsess over IDE’s and other so-called productivity tools.
Trouble is every decent software engineer knows that actually you want less code. It’s easier to maintain, easier to change, easier to debug, easier to build on. They’ll also tell you that the best way to build big codebases is out of lots of small, well isolated, loosely coupled bits with minimal knowledge of each other.
The less code philosophy requires doing some design, pausing for thought and not cranking code. It can provide massive benefit but it’s difficult to measure in any simplistic fashion and thus is seen as pure cost by many.
More code is the hare, less code is the tortoise – know which one I’d bet on.
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For a long time, software development within many an enterprise is treated as a subservient entity. Something that is expected to comply with the demands of the business without complaint and with limited options for pushback.
I believe the software we produce should be viewed as a stakeholder in it’s own right. It has it’s own needs for survival and ongoing growth and if these are always placed behind everyone else’s (i.e. the business) considerations, the results will be a long slow, painful death where the software becomes more and more brittle, less and less maintainable and staff productivity drifts down as staff turnover creeps up.
Consider a car – it has needs, new tyres, oil flushes, new exhausts, paint chip removal, new springs, new clutch etc. Fail to address those needs and your car will turn into a pile of rust before your eyes with all the attendant issues of depreciation, lost investment, breakdowns etc.
Why do we refuse to accept that software has a need for the motoring equivalent of oil changes and the like? Probably because software is an invisible abstract thing such that only those working with it see the damage being done, problem cars are easier to spot for a greater percentage of the population. This isn’t really an excuse however because software gives warning signs just as cars do. If there’s steam coming from under the bonnet (hood) you’d go to a mechanic, if your software keeps crashing or upgrades keep failing or development takes longer and longer it surely follows that it’s time to visit with your software engineer.
[ You may have noticed I like car analogies - here's another: You can't endlessly tune a car, it will only go so fast. Any further increase in speed can only come from starting with a new car that has better basic performance ingredients. The same is true for software, eventually you need a redesign to make further progress because the initial assumptions you made have all been invalidated. ]
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