{"id":68,"date":"2002-03-04T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2002-03-05T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2009-01-25T21:13:59","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T05:13:59","slug":"joel-gets-it-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"Joel gets it this time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/articles\/NothingIsSimple.html\">latest installment<\/A> of <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/\">Joel on Software<\/A>, Joel talks about the importance of design in software projects.<\/p>\n<p>In short, a small amount of up-front design work can result in massive savings down the line.  If you don&#8217;t do that design work, not only do you wind up paying for it later, you wind up paying for it many many times over.  Everybody I know has seen it happen, yet for some reason people still spout bullshit lines like &#8220;We don&#8217;t have time to do a spec.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is a lot better than some of Joel&#8217;s <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/articles\/fog0000000069.html\">past rants<\/A>, wherein he insists that it&#8217;s never better, faster, or cheaper to scrap a code base and start over than it is to <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.refactoring.com\/\">refactor<\/A> that codebase.  I suspect Joel has never actually worked on truly horrible code.  I&#8217;ve seen firsthand how, if you can manage to combat <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www1.fatbrain.com\/asp\/bookinfo\/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=0201835959\">the Second System Effect<\/A>, rewriting a horrible codebase can actually be faster, cheaper, and result in better software than trying to refactor it into something manageable.<\/p>\n<p>Funny thing: The rewrite was one of those projects where the power of a detailed, written specification was supremely evident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the latest installment of Joel on Software, Joel talks about the importance of design in software projects. In short, a small amount of up-front design work can result in massive savings down the line. If you don&#8217;t do that design work, not only do you wind up paying for it later, you wind up&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,3],"tags":[70,36],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology","tag-design","tag-joel-on-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p74loH-16","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}