Hacker News Reader

Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Yep, and the big companies basically use Agile as an excuse for not thoroughly planning and vetting ideas. Just build it and figure it out as you go. Then rebuild everything in 2 years since you're left with outdated and unmanageable spaghetti code and you burnt out all your SMEs so they took the knowledge with them.

View on HN

Do they ever rebuild things? Or just add features ontop of features till the whole thing creaks.

generally they wait until something explodes or they cannot add any features to the unmaintainable mess and they have no choice :)

Yep, this is what my experience is. It could be a cost explosion too, like using expensive mainframes and migrating to something else before the MIPS cost explodes.

Did somebody successfully migrated from a mainframe? Asking for a friend.

Yes, I've heard of some systems successfully migrating from the mainframe at my company. It tends to be a painful process. There are still some apps that need to be migrated.

Several years after a project completes when the system is finally sort of working and the end users know what to expect new management will come in at a high enough level and demand everything be rebuilt using their tech stack of choice because they need the resume entries.

Then of course you'll get a buggy second system that is back at square 0 which the business doesn't understand/hates and the developers hate because they're constantly fighting fires.

Waterfall and spiral model failed in the general case for the reason of plan everything in advance, so unless it's a safety critical system I'd say Agile is still better.

I say this because no matter what methodology is used there will be spaghetti code regardless, mid tier devs like to over engineer solutions, junior devs don't know better and do whatever is first on stackoverflow.

Business execs also don't ever know what they want so change a system half way through when they see prototypes so then you still end up with Franken-systems.

To that end, you might as well start with a half spec'd system as it saves time.

You make it sound like Waterfall had full plans and completely vetted ideas.

It didn't.

> Just build it and figure it out as you go.

That sounds like hundreds of waterfall projects that I was pulled into after they hit the 1/2 way mark and we're running behind because of unexpected scenarios.

It had better plans than the way Agile has been done on the teams I've been on. You can certainly misuse either. In my experience, planning is neglected more Agile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com