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Subject:RE: Best laid plans of mice From:"Latella, Vincent" <VINCENT -dot- LATELLA -at- saic -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 2 Dec 2008 15:33:26 -0500
The developers with whom I work also look for (and even rely on) code
comments, and I've certainly heard some of them complain when a
predecessor (intentionally?) neglected to compose comments.
That brings up the opposite issue; instead of employees going above and
beyond to neatly wrap things up before their departure, there are
employees who want to make the impact of their separation felt as much
as possible, and maliciously, they'll leave no clues (in the form of
neatly organized documents, code comments, etc.) for their successors.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+vincent -dot- latella=saic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+vincent -dot- latella=saic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Keith Hood
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:07 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Best laid plans of mice
Craig, unfortunately, your story doesn't surprise me at all; in fact,
I'd consider it kind of standard. It's always been my experience with
programmers and engineers that checking the documentation is always the
very last thing they'll do. They always prefer to go straight into the
code. More than once I've asked programmers, if they had to work on
software that had been created by someone else who was now gone, what
kind of documents would they find most useful in helping them understand
the product? And in every case the answer was, code comments - because
they wouldn't bother with looking at any kind of design documents unless
they couldn't figure out the source code.
I once did a run book for our company's database server, at the request
of the head DBA. I thought, good, maybe they're finally getting serious
about business continuity/data protection measures. Nope. The guy did
nothing with it but print a copy and take it with him when he left the
company a week later. He only wanted it so he could show prospective
employers something about what kind of work he'd been doing.
> From: Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com>
> Subject: Best laid plans of mice
> To: "Technical Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 9:39 AM
> Once when I l left a place for which I was maintained their
> databases, I
> wrote procedures for all the things I did. I was working as
> a programmer
> at the time.
>
>
>
> I put my notes into a nice binder, showed it to everyone in
> operations,
> went through it with someone, and left it in plain sight.
>
>
>
> Sometime later I discovered the binder got kicked under
> some furniture
> and forgotten. My notes were never used. How about that?
>
>
>
> I actually went back to work at that same company years
> later at another
> location and found my old binder in a box of old papers. I
> retrieved it
> and kept it. I still have it.
>
>
>
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