> Well, I don't know that we can separate external forces from why people might dislike bad code...
I'm not denying the validity of the reasons stemming from external forces. I'm just enumerating a bunch of additional reasons why developers might have a problem with bad code.
>> If you try to do something right and take pride in your work, your teammates will be resentful that you're not closing your bugs fast enough.
> Right, but why would they resent that? Probably because management has expectations on the team, and they are concerned that you're sandbagging the metrics. It ends up being a management or cultural problem regardless.
Heh. That's definitely a valid and common reason for resentment, but again I think the resentment can arise from more internal reasons as well. Even the craft coders recognize that you can't polish forever, and if one person spends 90% of their time polishing, then effectively that requires the others to pick up the feature work slack. That person is leaning on the rest of the team. It might be sometimes the right thing to do, but if it's a perennial pattern then even a team with 100% anal-retentive craft coders is going to get annoyed. Possibly because it cuts into their polish time, so they end up shipping worse code than they'd like.
But then, I'm not sure we're even disagreeing. The above could be labeled as "cultural". I think of the internal/external distinction as one where it's internal to the team vs imposed by management.
I'm not denying the validity of the reasons stemming from external forces. I'm just enumerating a bunch of additional reasons why developers might have a problem with bad code.
>> If you try to do something right and take pride in your work, your teammates will be resentful that you're not closing your bugs fast enough.
> Right, but why would they resent that? Probably because management has expectations on the team, and they are concerned that you're sandbagging the metrics. It ends up being a management or cultural problem regardless.
Heh. That's definitely a valid and common reason for resentment, but again I think the resentment can arise from more internal reasons as well. Even the craft coders recognize that you can't polish forever, and if one person spends 90% of their time polishing, then effectively that requires the others to pick up the feature work slack. That person is leaning on the rest of the team. It might be sometimes the right thing to do, but if it's a perennial pattern then even a team with 100% anal-retentive craft coders is going to get annoyed. Possibly because it cuts into their polish time, so they end up shipping worse code than they'd like.
But then, I'm not sure we're even disagreeing. The above could be labeled as "cultural". I think of the internal/external distinction as one where it's internal to the team vs imposed by management.