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Worshipping the God of Lapsed Visual Basic Project Schedules |
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At first glance, you might be overwhelmed by the kinds of classes, objects, and subsystemsdescribed in this bookthat Visual Basic is capable of supporting. Don't be. The information contained in this book is intended to provide you with an honestly working skeleton (with sample flesh) that you can use to provide a reasonable, instant architecture upon which to build your Visual Basic application. The skeleton is to help you concentrate more on your client's business rules and the low-level APIs you've been required to work with at the client site. This skeleton, then, is by no means an exhaustive application architecture but a skeletal architecture that has some flesh, but needs for you, the developer, to flesh it out completely and rapidly. |
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Try not to interpret the adverb rapidly loosely. Rapid development without an architecture, purpose, focus, cooperation, and coordination is meaningless at best, and doomed to failure at worst. It seems that 9 out of 10 projects, in some way, fit this description. In fact, you're probably on such a project now. You know this kind of project, where in the interview, you're assured that you'll have plenty of time to deliver something (as long as you meet the deadlines), that the requirements have already been gathered, and on and on. And then, when you get onboard the project, everything is like a honeymoon for a couple of weeks, but suddenly, out of the blue, some unseen force pushes your head into your desk and tells you, Get that code hammered out and delivered by close of business tomorrow! That unseen force is what you might call the god of lapsed project schedules. |
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This god is a fierce god. Because this terrible god often demands human sacrifices (that is, your spouse, children, parents, friends, your sanity, and so on), most programmers don't have time to lift their heads up and expect more out of life. And this god claims its adherents early in their careers, even before they leave college. That's right, think back to the times you had to have a program finished before a midterm or a final exam, and you begged your professor for more time, only to be politely rebuffed. You might not have realized it then, but that was the god of lapsed project schedules introducing itself to you, trying to claim your soul. Just because you graduated didn't mean he left you alone. Oh, no. In fact, he already claims more adherents than any system development methodology in the industry today. If you're not careful, you or someone you know might become the next faithful adherent in a seeming conspiracy to convert every new programmer to this unseen religion. |
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This god is also a very complex god, with numerous and varied ways for his adherents to express their obedience. What this god doesn't like is the efficient programmer, system analyst, architect, tester, and technical writer. He can't stand having too much time on his |
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