Two ways to develop software, or One night in the life of programmer Misha

“Two paths go along: the path of life and the path of death ... People do not follow any path, neither the path of life, nor the path of death. The whirlwind bears them like straw. ”
Gustav Meyrink, "Golem"

The office was quiet and dark, only the sound of the keys and the rare clicks of the mouse violated the subtle humming of the cooler, and the widescreen monitor lit up the exhausted face of regular developer Misha. An outside observer might think that the usual working night is going from Friday to Saturday. So it was for thousands of other developers around the world, but not for Misha. Putting another empty bottle under the table, he suddenly felt that the border separating him from the proud title of “senior developer” was not so far away.

“I don't get up until noon, I work until two in the morning and drink up to three liters of beer at a time. Probably, I'm becoming a professional, ”thought Misha, and at that very moment I felt a heavy look on myself. What he saw, looking up from the monitor, made him freeze in horror. Two figures in gray robes stood on either side of his desk. Persons hidden by lowered hoods looked sternly and at the same time indifferent. It was terrible to move at least one finger or sigh, and the mind desperately refused to believe in the reality of what was happening - after all, Misha recognized these two. Senior colleagues told him that whenever someone steals up to the mystical edge between a simple developer and an older one, these two come to him to devote themselves into their dark secrets.
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Misha swallowed and quietly asked in a trembling voice:

- Tim-leader Kohl? Project Manager Isy? The working day is long over, what are you doing here? And why all this masquerade?

“Mikhail, you yourself know why we are here,” answered Nick, with an impassive voice, “the position of an ordinary developer has become small to you.” It's your time, Michael.
“The time of initiation,” Isya continued just as impassively and dryly, “let's follow us and we will show you the two sides of the development - light and dark.” This night you will know enough to make a choice.
- I will show you the bright side of the development of which any engineer dreams. And Izya will show you the wrong side, the dark side, from which programmers have goosebumps.
“Dark Side, this is called Dark Side,” Izzy corrected.
- Yes, many native words on the dark side are replaced by the transcription of foreign terms. Do not worry, Misha, you get used to it. Get ready.

Having said that, Kohl and Izzy turned around and went towards the exit. There was nothing to collect Misha, so he got up from his working chair, and, with difficulty moving his padded legs, followed him.

When Misha caught up with them near the elevator, Kohl, without turning around, spoke:
“First you have to accept the bitter truth.” The purpose of software development - profit. Yes, all our architectures, databases, algorithms, and frameworks are side effects of business. Fortunately, in its pure form, no dark, not bright side does not occur. Otherwise, in the first case, the software would cease to exist, because no one would have done it, and in the second, because the development would have lasted forever. Yes, just do not need to equate the bright and dark side to good and evil. After all, if you look, we all serve the same ...
“Any organization exists only so that its leader can buy a Porsche-Cayenne,” Izya interrupted him, and they both laughed together. Here, for the first time, Misha visited the idea of ​​slowly slipping away from these two, but, as if reading his thoughts, Izya turned to him:
- Leave your fear - today you have nothing to fear, because a special night is floating above the ground, we call it “Lel-Kodim”.
Misha did not understand much of these words, but the desire to run away somewhere disappeared, especially since the elevator had already arrived.

Inside the elevator reigned pleasant twilight. Unobtrusive pleasant music flowed from somewhere above. “It seems to be Brian Eno,” thought Misha. There were no familiar buttons with floors. Instead, there was a small panel of smooth light metal. At the top was a silhouette of a bitten apple, at the bottom - the only button without any inscriptions.
“What a strange elevator I have never seen before,” Misha was surprised. “How does he know where I want to go?”
“Misha, this is a very modern elevator,” Izya replied in a somewhat annoyed way, “its creators know better where you need to go.”
With these words, Izzy pressed the button, the doors closed smoothly, and the elevator went. By a slightly increased gravity, Misha realized that they had gone up, and at the same time with a decent speed.

Bright side

The elevator doors opened and Misha was blinded by a bright light. He had never seen such a bright light in his life. But there was a clap and the light went out.
- Damn, again the light burst. Look there, are you still there? Asked a voice from the dark.
“Well, how many times to speak, no, and now we cannot afford it,” another voice answered him, “when we launch in-app purchase, then we will immediately buy light bulbs.”
“Look carefully, Mikhail, this is a startup,” said Nick triumphantly, coming out of the elevator and circling a dirty basement room with his hand. At the far wall, opposite to each other, were two school desks, each of which was equipped with a computer. At the first computer was a bearded man of indeterminate age in worn trousers and an old sweater. From the stains on the sweater one could get a rough idea of ​​his diet. The man behind the next computer looked a bit more neat - he was wearing sweatpants and a crimson-colored turtleneck. Instead of a mouse, he had a graphic tablet. Next to the elevator was a broken-down sofa, on which a third party of the startup was sitting - jeans, a plaid shirt and horn-rimmed glasses were skillfully torn on it. On his lap was a laptop.

Misha took a step out of the elevator and heard the glass of a light bulb crack under the sole of his boot. He flinched from surprise. All three looked in the direction of Misha.

- Do not worry, they do not see us, today we are not instantiated and exist only in the form of abstractions, - Kohl quickly spoke, - you will probably now ask me why we took the elevator up and got to the basement? You see, this is only the beginning, for many. I anticipate and another your question - why are we here in this basement? A startup in this form, based on pure enthusiasm, is the furthest edge of the bright side of software development. No one has entered the bright side any further than enthusiastic startups. The bright side is focused on developing the best possible software. On the bright side there are almost all startups. It is understandable - the budgets are either absent or relatively small. For profit here, you need not reports and meetings, but a specific product sold. And against the background of high competition, a better product always looks more attractive. Startups like this meet the needs that naturally formed before the start of a startup. For example, the need to communicate with friends, the need to predict the weather and traffic jams, the need to take notes, but what to list, thousands of them! These three geeks at computers are the whole company. They have no guidance other than common sense and a desire to make quality programs.

Kohl stopped to breathe a little. By him it was obvious that he admires these guys.

- And then what will happen to them? - timidly asked Misha, - Do they not sit here all their life, in the basement?
- Yes, you are right, - answered Kohl, - usually startups live right up to the first delivery of 4-FSS. This one, in a crimson turtleneck, which now draws something in Photoshop - he will become a designer, although he will never learn to draw. This one, with a laptop, is the only one whose shoes are clean - they will implement 1C. But the bearded one ... I don’t even want to talk about him.

As if he had heard that we were talking about him, the bearded man rose from the table and stretched sweetly.
- I finally did what I planned for so long. Now all the logic of interaction between threads is covered by unit tests. What a JUnit good thing after all, ”he said, coughed and left the room.

Misha wanted to go to the computer, so that at least glance at how to test multi-threaded applications using JUnit, but Izya pulled it down:

- We have little time. The night is short, and we have not yet visited the dark side. Let's go from the gloomy basement of the light side to the spacious air-conditioned office!

Dark side

Izya was the last to enter the elevator car and hit a single button. When the doors closed, he turned to Misha:

- So, now you will see the dark-side software development. Immediately I warn you, it is much more complex than the bright side. All your data structures and algorithms are childish pranks compared to cuts and rollbacks. I'm afraid even you won't understand most of what you see, but at least you should figure out why the dark side is presented to you by the prog-manager, and not by the tester or some other resource.

The phrase “some other resource” touched Misha, but before he found himself answering, a melodic bell rang, and the elevator doors swung open silently. Going out after Izya, Misha and Kohl found themselves in the middle of a huge and immaculately clean room, divided by plastic partitions into small sections. In each section there were about five tables with chairs. Interestingly, there were almost no computers anywhere.

- Isy, why are there no computers on the dark side of software development? Do they all have laptops? Or tablets? - asked Misha.

“Your question points to a lack of understanding of the basic principles of the dark side,” Izya said. - But nothing, I will try to give you an explanation. What you see in front of you is not an office. This is a scalable office solution. It is made so because of the specifics of personnel management. Simply put, resource hiring occurs at moments of minimal cost, and faring at times of unprofitable content. By the way, pay attention to partitions. A curious story is connected with them. Previously, for each unit of the resource, something like a cabinet was built out of four fences. But after Copeland released its waste paper, we began to divide open-space into larger fragments, or even save on partitions.

- Hiring resources? You mean hiring employees, programmers? - asked Misha.

- No, there are no people on the dark side, there are only managers and resources that they distribute! - Izi's eyes flashed with unkind fire and faintly smelt gray in the air, - remember this, and do not allow yourself any more such liberties.

“Good,” answered Misha quietly and put his head in his shoulders.

- That's better, - Izzy calmed down a bit, - so, let's continue. In short, dark-side software development is a legitimate way to withdraw money from a customer. Dark-side is focused on as much as possible poor-quality and protracted development. It would seem, how can this be? But, oddly enough, there are more companies on the dark side than you can imagine. Such a company receives income due to the maintenance of its low-quality products. For if a product is of high quality, how can it be spoiled? Therefore, the company makes every effort to make the product poor quality, but at the same time to release it. In the past, during the time of mainframe, romantics and streamers, the goal of developing a program was to obtain the results of a calculation. Now is the time of smart devices, pragmatists and clouds, and programs are created with the aim of creating at the customer a feeling that everything is fine. What do you think, Misha, what will happen if you immediately write a working program? You will be fired because there will be no work for you. You will deprive yourself of work! - Izzy laughed unkindly, - But I was distracted. Needs that satisfy the programs written here are formed by marketers. There was no such need before writing the program. People once lived without complex corporate solutions, and lived well! - Izzy laughed again, - A characteristic sign of the dark side is overstaffing - hiring more employees than necessary. It arises quite simply. The system is based on inappropriate architecture. Due to the uncontrolled growth of complexity, the development of the system is becoming increasingly difficult. Seeing that the development is delayed, management still hires employees. New employees, poorly understanding the system, further increase its complexity, which further slows down the development. Profit is obvious. As the state grows, the importance of each manager, from leading developers to directors, grows, and invoices issued to customers. But only as long as the customer is ready to pay for this whole circus. At one point, the customer says “Enough with me!” And ceases to cooperate. And the company dismisses most of the employees. By the way, here is our very valuable resource.

A middle-aged man was already sitting at one of the tables. He was short, if not small, tall, and a huge belly and a second chin gave him a lover of beer and football on TV. He stared at the monitor over small square glasses and typed something on the keyboard with short fat fingers, giggling from time to time.

It is not known where Izi got a deep plate full of cookies in her hands. Izzy put it on the table, and the man, without taking his eyes off the monitor, took a few pieces from her and put it in his mouth. Misha caught himself thinking that in the same way the owners feed their pets. Isy caught his eye and smiled.

- This is one of the benefits of dark-side. Keep in mind when you make a choice.

And laughed again.

“Look, it's already dawning,” said Nick, “it's time to finish our excursion already.” Misha, did you choose whom to join? Come on, have you chosen?

Kohl got down on his knees and started kissing Misha’s hands, and Izzy came up from behind and, clasping his hands, began to squeeze Misha’s chest. Misha's ears rang in his ears, and he felt that he was losing consciousness. The last thing he managed to think about was the fact that he wanted to go to the toilet ...

Morning

When the ringing became unbearable, Misha got out of bed, while pushing Izu with his chest. Izzy displeased meowed and tried again to get into the warm bed. Kohl sat beside him and, plaintively whimpering, licked Misha’s fingers, showing with his whole face that it was time to take him for a walk. Misha turned off the annoyingly ringing alarm clock and opened the window. He was immediately doused with cool, not yet filled with exhaust gases, the morning air. A light breeze slightly moved the drawings and construction estimates spread out on the table.

Misha reached out and muttered under his breath:
- Eh, well, sometimes I dream about it. It is good that I once entered the architectural, rather than mekhmat.

This story, along with many others, can be found in the book IT AS IS