The Problem with Partially Implemented Features
This afternoon, while the Developer Days was chugging along nicely, I decided to try and fix a bug I was seeing in the request/response service. I'd connect and subscribe to a family, and then get the first set of calculation results, but then after that, nothing. Initially, I wasn't getting the complete family the first time due to a problem with the isDirty() status not being set properly on cloned families. I fixed that guy pretty easily, but this was a little odd. During the day when we should have plenty of ticks, we weren't seeing updates. Made no sense. So I started digging into the code.
Turns out, it took me about 10 mins to realize that the isDirty() was not being set on any updates. It was there, but it wasn't really working. Not even close. This is one of the really nasty problems I see with some developers: they think that putting in the skeleton of a feature is enough to stop on, and they go on to something else without really effectively bookmarking the work, so they are sure to get back to it.
This was a pretty easy feature to do. I'm guessing it was no more than 15 mins to complete. But it was a critical 15 mins, and to have skipped this for several weeks is really pretty bad. You have to be able to bookmark your work - either notes in the code, like "TODO:" marks, or maybe a notepad, or something, so that you can remember what's been done, what hasn't, and what needs to be done. It's kinda frustrating, but at the same time, I have to remember who wrote the code, and cut them some slack.
Just got to get it all out of their hands to get the quality up.