I was chatting with a developer yesterday who had a really funny experience on a contract.
As they started on a project, he asked “What version control system do you use? CVS? SourceSafe? …”.
The answer was “Jane”.
“Huh????”, he thought. “I have never heard of a software package called Jane”.
It turned out that Jane was the secretary at the company, and she had post it notes. Lots of post it notes.
If you wanted to edit a file you would walk over to her desk and ask for the post it that represents that file. You would then control that post it until you were done.
“What about if more than one person need to edit the file?”
- You work it out together
“What about merging?”
- Manual
“Ok. But what if Jane goes on vacation?”
October 20th, 2004 at 12:39 pm
This should work fine as long as Jane is not afraid of committment.
–
Cedric
October 20th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
oh my god those jokes suck.
I can’t wait to ask Jane for a LOG.
October 23rd, 2004 at 9:27 am
As nightmarish as this situation is, I see this as an opportunity. Entering a company as an independent software consultant affords you many things, one of which can be (under the right circumstances) a major amount of influence. With this influence, one has the ability to shape the direction of such a group of developers in such a manner that this leads directly into almost all areas of the software development process. That being said, is there any possibility of this contract being a long term, positive opportunity, Dion? Are these developers open to such influence?