I AM SO SAD...please update Firestorm cats too!

[Tad Carlucci]

All it says is that, after half a century managing programmers and designing systems, I pretty much know how it goes. The promise was made and the programmer did the best he could to fulfill it. But it will, eventually, turn out to be a bad management decision.

You see, it's not a question of quality or work, but quality of design; and this is simply a bad design.

Hopefully, they'll realize it and not make more such decisions. But done is done, and, even if we never see the fallout, there will be fallout; hopefully they'll catch the errors before they go into production. But, one wonders what they'll do if they forget to put the required checks in a future Updater and accidentally upgrade some Firestorm kitties; or forget to put the old version in a future Dock and face a spate of complaints not being able to retrieve Firestorm cats.

[JC Aferdita]

The workflow we had at my job:
Designer/Artist goes to the programmer and asks 'hey, I was thinking about this, is it possible to do?'
The programmer responds with a 'Hm, not sure, let me look into it and I'll get back to you'
The programmer looks into it, comes up with a conclusion and goes back to the designer/artist
'It is possible, but in the long run it might cause problems, I couldn't find any solutions for the problems, I'll keep looking into it, but the way it looks now it's going to be a no'
Designer 'Aww, that's a shame, oh well, thank you for looking into it!'

If possible to come up with something similiar but different that wouldn't cause problem a discussion of that would take place.

Perhaps I had a dreamjob compared to you. It was in the world of game development, not sure what your expertise lie but *shrugs*

[Tad Carlucci]

Yeah, my experience is more like:

In the beginning was the plan.

And then came the assumptions.

And the assumptions were without form.

And the plan was without substance.

And darkness was upon the face of the workers.

And they spoke among themselves saying,

"It is a crock of shit and it stinketh."

And the workers went unto their supervisors and said,

"It is a pale of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."

And the supervisor went unto their managers and said,

"It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."

And the managers went unto their directors, saying,

"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."

And the directors spoke among themselves, saying to one another,

"It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong."

And the directors went unto the vice presidents, saying unto them,

"It promotes growth and is very powerful."

And the vice presidents went unto the president, saying unto him,

"The new plan will promote the growth and vigor of the company, with powerful effects."

And the president looked upon the plan and saw that it was good.

And the plan became policy.

This is how shit happens.

[Ivy Norsk]

That is the most lyrical thing I've ever seen you write on the forum Tad.

[Tad Carlucci]

Thanks. I was going to write something from personal experience but realized I was basically describing The Plan, which I remember (and still have) appeared in Dr Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia back when it was a 30-page saddle-stitched magazine with a plain-brown cover (showing my age: that was like 1980 or so, I don't the the PC had been released yet). So I found a copy on-line and did a copy-and-paste.

We all would love to work someplace where Management and Marketing actually listen to what Software Support has to say; but, in my experience, that's pretty rare. But then, much of my career was mainly as a trouble-shooter; if you had a project with was a year late and a million over budget, you called people like me to get it done.

[JC Aferdita]

I guess I've been extremely lucky then since the majority (80-90%) of the gamedev projects I've been working on have been the way I've described. Only once (maybe twice) have it been the opposite, the way you describe, and that project nosedived into a lavapit and caught on fire. So we buried it deep where no one ever could find it ever.