The case
A big (2B+ $) company. The division in the middle of UK. They make Set Top Boxes - they are somehow good at that.The hammer
There is plenty of good old-schoold devs here, perfectly knowing C (but nothing else), working on Windows machines, connecting to "build server" through one putty console.They usually use one LCD, they love to put a 1000+ of shell commands to copy files instead of using at least Midnight Commander.
They do a hard work with their hammers. And yet they are afraid of learning anything more than hammer:
What is QT for ? It's just adding mess into regular function calls ! I don't get it !
Arrrgh, JavaScript, what for is that ? and that bloody QML ? We could do that in C !
The nail
Devs here were forced some time ago to switch from CVS to SVN. Some of they did, some not. They end up with a multi-repo environment with a bunch of propertiary magic shell scripts that TRY to connect messy SVN + CVS world in one piece... This made so much horror/trauma to devs, that now they are just frozen ! No-one wants to solve a situation. Word "git" is prohibited. They don't make branches - it's forbidden... Yes, really - magic world of Alice in Wonderland !The unproductivity
Instead of solving the situation, they add more and more advanced tools on top of existing software development chain... Using hammer for everything is not optimal. But using hammer with over-grown interface is even worse...That kind of work is non-productive. Solving bug takes ages. Testing a fix or integrating - takes even more...
They struggle to meet deadlines. The official reason is: there is not enough people.
Vicious circle: people come
But yet, they employ a lot !
People come and work here. They see hammers and nails... They try to convince them for improvement, to introduce better tools, known by rest of the world, instead of repairing existing broken hammers.
They fail to introduce any change, becuase of frozen wall. After some time - good people go...
Vicious circle: people go
Good people don't like to work in such environment, where nothing is moving forward, where you can see no progress. Instead - people change job.So the company again end up with new unfinished ideas. Number of hammer-nail solutions grow. Then, even if more people come, they also escape after some time...
Productivity
This post is just a suggestion - try to think about your productivity and productivity around you.Do you use proper tools ? Can you learn something new to be more productive or to make people around you more productive ?
Do you use hammer for everything ?
