Comments on: New Poll: What’s The Worst Part About Software Development As A Career?

By: Waynemckittrick

Waynemckittrick — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:52:00 +0000

Poor code is everywhere. Difficult personalities and incompetent managers. Anyone who doesn’t care about the work – I can handle those who don’t have knowledge, but they need to have a real drive to learn and improve. Teamwork is everything. Why is it that I only encounter those with passion responding to blogs? I have worked with folks with passion, but it seems too common that we have folks involved in IT (actually, anywhere these days) who don’t really care. Man, life is too short – no passion = walking dead.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:50:28 +0000

I agree with this one: “customers who don’t want to pay for quality work”.
Too many companies are delivering sub-standard work at low prices which leads to unrealistic price expectations among clients – and the resulting price squeeze means that a proportionally larger part of the budget is spent on pitching and selling the project – with preciously little left for the actual development – and so it’s corner cutting time yet again – and forget about testing!

Still – overall I still think it’s a great job – beats picking up phones and sending emails all day.

By: David Pickett

David Pickett — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:02:44 +0000

“Can you imagine two mechanics arguing over which 3/8 wrench will get the job done better.”

If you frequent forums where people who use (physical) tools hang out, you’ll see this ALL the time. DeWalt vs. Porter-Cable vs. Grizzly vs. ….

I think the real differentiator is the fact that software tools are easy to change back and forth between — anyone can click a link to just about any language distribution in existence and try it out and/or attempt to wedge it into the production cycle. Your average cabinet maker is probably not vehement enough about his choices to try and sneak a Euro-style sliding tablesaw into the shop to “prove” how much better it works (not to mention the physical feasibility, even if desire and funds were available).

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:20:58 +0000

that reminds me… i forgot to include ‘dealing with frustrated, bitter people’

By: Bunter

Bunter — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:44:57 +0000

Lot of the same field professionals who always blame technology, managers, incompetent devs, tools and buzzwords to hide their own incompetence, narrow-mindness, zero knowledge of things outside one’s professional field and complete and utter lazyness

By: Grant Trimble

Grant Trimble — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:14:06 +0000

Developers that have almost religious affiliation to some or other language, tool etc.
Can you imagine two mechanics arguing over which 3/8 wrench will get the job done better.
It just seems, in general, developers are gullable and narrow minded.

By: RCE

RCE — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:34:44 +0000

Interacting with business people who skip the technical lead of a project and start shouting about things that should, according to them, take two minutes to fix but in reality takes over two days. Eventually I can convince them that it might take longer than expected, but they still try, hence irritating me and wasting my time.

Business requirements that get changed behind one’s back (they expect you to check their “bible” thing the whole damn time). I mean, if you insist on using word, put change tracking on plskthx. And emails don’t cost you anything.

Business people who think it’s a-ok to play around with the stored procedures on the database.

By: Kristof Rennen

Kristof Rennen — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:51:37 +0000

I also dislike bad database access and bad written queries.
Fixing timeouts, deadlocks, database tuning, slow queries … is really a terrible thing.

You really need very good sql knowledge to get everything right in big systems, and most developers don’t know sql very well, ending up in badly written and badly performing queries.

By: chrissie1

chrissie1 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:32:02 +0000

Windows?

Just kidding. But I’ll second IE6.

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:16:59 +0000

lol @ IE6 :p

@Michel

i agree it’s (usually) a great job, but we all run into these downsides every once in a while, and some us need to deal with them on a daily basis

@David

i agree… the ‘worst’ part about that somewhat falls into the ‘Buzzwords’ option. But yeah, continuously learning new things (if you pick the right ones to invest your time in) is one of the better parts of the job

@Justin

that applies to more than just web developers

By: Justin Yost

Justin Yost — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:35:07 +0000

As a Web Developer, customers who don’t want to pay for quality work and who have no taste and insight on bad/cruddy designs.

By: David

David — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:10:09 +0000

Best *and* worst part about software development:

There is always so much to learn. This leads to an exhausting effort to continually learn and improve, and also means that no matter how good you are you will tend to look back at what you did 12+ months ago and it will look like rubbish.

Or maybe that’s just me :\

By: Michel Grootjans

Michel Grootjans — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:56:10 +0000

It’s not that bad. It’s actually a great job with minor issues.

By: Jim Frantzen

Jim Frantzen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:40:21 +0000

IE6.