Whats in a name?
Thu, Jan 27, 2011
The name of this website is a play on the title of a defining computer programming book from Steve McConnell called Code Complete. If you have been programming for any period of time and haven’t owned at least 1 copy of this book then you’re doing it wrong.
While the book itself is excellent, the title is an impossibility! Code is never complete! There is always more…
- … bugs to fix
- … features to add
- … tests to write
- … messy code to be refactored
- … documentation to be written
- … performance to optimize
- … scalability infrastructure to be engineered
- … security to be improved
- … run-time operations to measure and monitor
- … platforms to support
- … colors to tweak
- … DIVs to line up
- … IE bugs to deal with
- … FIXMEs and TODOs to grep for …
The developers will tell you that a task is almost done. ‘oh, I’d say its about 80% done’, but then the remaining 20% will take just as long, if not longer, than the first 80%. Why? because the code is never complete, there is always more, and more, and more, and more…
When a task finally does get marked done and checked off the list, you can bet its not really and truly complete. All that you are really saying is that right here, right now, for this companies culture, its good enough to ship.
So ship it! and move on.