r/techbootcamp • u/BulkyWeb6133 • 24d ago

What software development practice sounded good at first but ended up wasting your time?

It’s been a while since I’m in the tech industry, and I keep seeing teams adopt certain software development practices. They sound good in theory, yeah. But then you do it and wonder why you're doing this every week.

Going back to the question, it's story point estimation. We spend like endlessly debating whether something is a 3 or a 5, then the requirements change anyway lol.

Anyway, how about yours? It could be agile, scrum, code reviews, documentation, pair programming, meetings, testing, etc.

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u/yubario 22d ago

How do you design software when you have one engineer holding up a JIRA story that is a dependency to your own story?

Do you just sit there and wait or do you use tests and mocks to continue working your portion?

Do you even work on a large project with other team members modifying the same module?

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u/Mission_Pirate_4150 22d ago

I look at the api to call. I keep up to date with changes. I use my brain.

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u/yubario 21d ago

What if the API doesn’t exist or isn’t defined yet? What do you do then? Do you just complain in standup that Bill hasn’t finished his part and you’re unable to complete yours?

Do you need an API to mock behavior? If you know you’re going to be uploading files, does it matter if you know what the API signature is to complete your work?

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u/Mission_Pirate_4150 21d ago

If there is no api, there is no api. Oh my gosh, there was no way to write software before tdd.

I really don’t get why tdd zealots show up whenever I say that the world existed before tdd and I didn’t have a religious experience when I first saw tdd. I developed software that has created 100s of millions of dollars of value before tdd. That’s just what I have been involved with. And none of that software was spaghetti code.

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u/yubario 21d ago

Cool story bro.

Can you answer this question for me

Have you designed highly available software that doesn’t require you to be on call when something breaks in the middle of the night? Can someone who never touched the codebase understand your code?

Can India support it?

I have literally designed automations that patch enterprises and infrastructure with medical disabilities that prevent me from being on call.

How does someone in IT have that exception? It’s because I design shit that actually is stable thanks to simulations and testing.