On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, you wrote:
> Having something to crash on when pulling an all-nighter is, IMO, a bad
> idea as it encourages pulling all-nighters. You just don't write good
> code at 2 in the morning, and end up spending just as much time untangling
> it as you did writing it in the first place.
yes and no. If you need to do an allnighter and its unavoidable (due to a
client suddenly changing ther mind) then theres no problem doing it ..
just charge em bigtime!
Personally I have done (thinks) about 4 this year ... two of them due to
sudden arrival of previously unannounced deadline .. (result: badly
implemented crap code, stress, huge costs and a re write a week later)
and 2 because I was just so tied up in it and it was going so well that I
didn;t want to stop .. so I didn't ... the code from the latter is
untouched to date and some of the better code I've written.
There is nothing wrong per-se with working on into the night ... the lack
of interruption and no pesky phones ringing can be the ideal time to
engross yourself in the trickiest and most complex of problems ... but
trying to hack something together whilst knackered is a recipie for
disaster. My motto: if it feels good, do it. Code when you feel at your
most productive, if you don;t think your minds on the job bale out and
play. One of the reason I hated a 9 to 5 job was people asking me to do
hard things before lunchtime and having to quit doing hard things because
it was 5:00.
> And in any case, if you
> *need* to work all night, there's something wrong with the project
> management.
no matter how well planned the project I have yet to find a client who
hasn;t kept some small but deadly surprise as a secret to throw in just
when they know its getting close. Some of these bombshells are smaller
than others .. but they always seem to be there, waiting ... no problem
.. just expect em an be prepared .. and charge em BigTime :)
I would be VERY interrested in working on a project managed by the XP
method. It sounds to good to be true, (and I;ve done enough project
managment to know that it probably is too good to be true) but I shure
would like to give it a go.
--
Robin Szemeti
The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!
