Keith Bluestone

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since December 20, 2009

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December 21, 2009, on Software Design Review:
Great article, couldn't agree more. As a software architect with about 30 years' experience in the field, I also have spent untold hours "nagging" developers and architects alike to document not only their design decisions, but their code! Software development should be easy, but this article is another of many showing how cutting corners leads to disaster. Cutting corners almost *always* lowers value and ROI for software projects. In my own most recent experience, inside one of the largest and (formerly) most successful online advertising networks, I saw at close hand the truly epic failures of a company-wide initiative to refresh the entire adserving platform (legacy UNIX to .NET). This involved a technology division of at least some 150 folks. Management made all the *classic* software development mistakes: hiring outside consultants to do the job, for instance; having *way* too few architects, for another. They soldiered on through YEARS of poor designs, missed dates, bro...