Tips for software development /theoretical/

Well we all know how vast this topic is so I am going to be simple on this ;)

I will take two of my favorite sayings!

"Things should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler." — Albert Einstein

Let us dig deeper on this thought! All people seem to have heard such sayings and react as "Well it is obvious you fool it is like you found a gold mine... fool!" when someone told them this wisdom. But why are they reacting so and why are they producing these enormous amount of software that is so over complexed?

Simple! They know it but never use it!
There is an other situation where dead lines play role and developers are forced to continue coding without re-thinking what they did wrong and fix, rewrite, rethink ... it and so on.

So what is my tip for such people!
Do not agree to short dead lines! Know what you need ... time money... and so on for the software you do. Don't calc it to the shortest possible way!
Calc it to best one available. By best I really mean doing something like this:

1. "Time for the project" /time you think is enough for the project to be build/
2. "Time for the project"x2 /double the time needed/
3. +50% /for the unexpected/

So now calc the time!
If the time for the project was 3months .... add x2 and then 50%... it basically happens to be x3
so it comes to 9 months for the project to be ready... but you see it will really be ready and will satisfy most of the needs of the purchaser.

This scheme will prove the most effective if you are serious about software and do build software the way it should be build ... SIMPLE AND ELEGANT!


I will not give more information on the topic as it is well written and much more explained in hundreds of pages all over the net and the globe ;)

I will just give you an example of why simple software wins!
Here is another wise thought!

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be
the best one." — William of Ockham

All sounds very logical right :)
William and Albert told it!

If you found this refreshing of thoughts interesting then I really entered your mind and found a sweet spot... but the most important thing is! YOU REALIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF ALL THIS!

I recommend you read the book of 37singnals - Getting Real
It will reveal most of the things I didn't mentioned here but you already are thinking for. You can buy their book or just read it online at their site http://www.37signals.com/
Yes those are the RUBY people ;) they are the founders of Ruby On Rails.
So they know what they are talking about after being quite successful over time.



I would like to finish with this wise words again ;) so think over them whenever you build software... and in general something that people would use.

"Things should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler." — Albert Einstein