I’m tired about the eternal manager’s expression about Coders: “I need this finished by tomorrow morning, how many developers do you need?”
What? Are you serious? How many idiots do I need to replace you… I think. However there is an urban myth about coding: coding is a simple thing. It probably started when non-professional-coders start building their “own applications” using in Visual Basic, MS Access and MS Excel. There is something that they should know: Good software is not only a good idea, it should be built by good coders -trained people- using best practices, lead by senior system designers or at least experienced developers. It is not like include a formula inside a spreadsheet cell. NO! It suppose an understanding of the used programming paradigm (OO, Aspect, functional) and also a lot, lot of experience.
For those who believes that more coders will solve the timing problem I will say this: Coding is not like Peeling Potatoes, you cannot add more developers to work on the same code. If you didn’t plan it since the beginning -to have a lot of coders-, you cannot just add people like blocks, they need to be involved in a serious development process.
Stop asking pm’s, lead coders or senior developers to add mode coders! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT! CODING IS NOT LIKE PEELING POTATOES – In plain Colombianish: Echar código no es hacer arepas!