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Get out of the way, we are coding, Part I
One of the things that always bugged me when working at a corporate environment was the sheer amount of work you had to do just to be able to do your work. For example, I know of people who purchase our profilers out of their own pocket, because they want to do a better job, but their workplace won’t or can’t authorize that.
A lot of the time this has to do with the way the business allocate money. They may have a developer budget, but no tools budget, etc. Honestly, I think that this is stupid. And one of the things that I try to do is avoid being stupid.
In the end, almost any tool a developer want is going to cost significantly less then the lack of tool.
Hence…
Sure, it is a 10$ charge, but we do the same for pretty much every tool requested.
Comments
It's because people from so called "business" don't understand that tools can increase the productivity, therefore speed up the development of the product. That's why I believe that people who manage IT projects should have IT background. Otherwise, some programmers still have to deal with products like TFS, which are great, but only on presentations.
And it is surprising that the tool was only valued at 10$ which for a company is equal to zero, and is equal to maybe 50$. Just buy it.
It's not only about managers, but about bureaucracy in large corporations: it's not the manager that has to approve the expenses, but some distant accountant, that is afraid that if he approves that purchase, he will be punished .. :)
Used to work for a lumbering mega corp who would pay us six figures and good bonuses yet give us same machines as secretaries. Sigh...
I agree, but the last time I checked, Resharper 8 was $150 to upgrade, not $10
Aarrgh!, sorry I realise you are talking about respeller, not resharper
Management that doesn't understand software development will always save pennies to loose dollars.
9 on the Joel Test http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
I'm a firm believer.
What about RAM. I mean, RAM. God only know how many times I had to look at servers with 1GB or 2GB of RAM. And recently, virtual CPUs. If the documentation of said application states that the minimum requirement is of 4 CPU (and they probably meant physical), who in their rights minds would expect it to perform decently on 1 virtual CPU, squeezed with God knows how many other contenders?
I've seen this. And the company doesn't have to be that large to get into this mindset. Sometimes at very large companies, you can use the "ask for forgiveness" rule to get away with lots of useful things. :-)
Tools and training are both budget categories that pay dividends in job satisfaction and retention.
My other pet hate is lack of decent, multiple monitors
And I thought Vim is more than enough for real programmers.
Most enterprises see IT as a cost center. Considering all the over engineered bloat we (as a whole) tend to produce can you blame them?
Bought both Resharper and NHibernate Profiler myself, because after asking the company to buy/upgrade it, was, like, watching grass grow...for, um, years...
Yeah, real programmers use only Vim and Assembler. Nothing else is needed, except a billion years to deliver the most trivial piece of software.
No, Real Programmers use teco and program everything in Fortran, no matter which language they use.
"If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing."
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html
I worked for about 6 months on a desktop work computer that would reboot every hour or so. I finally gave up waiting and set up my home computer so I could remote into it. I would go to work, log into my fault computer, remote into my home computer and do my actual work. I did get a new work computer finally but I'm using my keyboard, mouse and two monitors. :-(
Jeff, A new machine would cost less than 500$. In fact, literally the very first machine I looked at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883250010 419$
Now, typical salary in the states for a programmer range from 60K - 100K (http://www.payscale.com/af/calc.aspx?job=computer+programmer&src=yahooA)
That gives us 5K per month, or about 250$ per day. Assuming absolutely the lowest numbers. I would tell the company that they can have a new machine by next week, or I quit.
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