I have a battle story or two. Worked contract on a little project. A civil engineering firm had hired a programmer to write what they needed to process measurements to determine if an earthen dam continued to be safe. The project had still not been turned over to the public agency when they reached the end of the time in the display software. So we were called in to extend the calendar a few years.
The software was not documented. We found some, but not all, of the source code. Seems the original programmer, by then long gone, had suggested documenting, but the boss had decided to save money by not keeping him on to do that. So we figured out how to do what was necessary. Just after we finished that, the engineering firm upgraded equipment; instead of local printers they bought a big, processor directed, laser printer. Suddenly pages that were supposed to be landscape orientation weren't, etc. So back to work. I had to sample the stream of output, detect the intended orientation, then insert the appropriate header parameters. Not too bad. When the time came to turn over the project to the public agency, we proposed they hire us to convert/rewrite the code for the PCs they planned to use. They decided not to spend the money; believed someone in the office could figure out how to do it. I would not buy property downstream of the dam. Choppy At 09:01 AM 1/17/05 -0600, Craig Banker wrote: >Quick question to the fellow coders out there... > >What do you do to bring yourself up to speed on complex coding projects? > >This one is very pertinant to those who want to contribute effort to open >source projects... > >Anybody care to share some insight or battle stories, perhaps?
