Comment by dkarl
9 months ago
> Keeping the code organized is useful and is a part of basic hygiene, but it's far from the defining characteristic of the craft.
I'm with you, but I don't think it makes sense to elevate one absolutely over the other as the "defining characteristic." Either one can tank the development of a piece of software and prevent it from coming into being in a useful way.
Arguments about which aspects of software are more important than others usually arise between people who have personally suffered through different ways that projects can fail. Any aspect of software development will feel like the "defining characteristic" if it threatens to kill your project.
> Any aspect of software development will feel like the "defining characteristic" if it threatens to kill your project.
That does not make sense to me. There can be thousand things that can kill project. One has to consider what are the odds for them.
How would you define the odds for the industry as a whole? The odds depend on the project, the team, the tech stack, and the organizational environment.
No matter how long I work (twenty-five years so far) I think my personal experience is only enough to know that if I've seen something, it probably happens fairly often. If I've never seen something, it still might be common for all I know.