Decompiling Programmer-Speak

From Fractals of Change we have “Decompiling Programmer-Speak”, none of which I have ever used (and now I”ve got to get a new decoder ring):

“It’ll be done ASAP.”
Translation: There is no schedule yet.

“That feature shouldn’t add any time to the schedule.”
Translation: There is no schedule yet.

“It’s fifty percent done.”
Translation: It hasn’t been started yet.

“It can literally do anything you want it do.”
Translation: There is no spec yet.

“Take my word for it, my group isn’t on the critical path.”
Translation: It’s schedule-chicken time. We’re way late but someone else is bound to be even later.

“It’s ninety percent done.”
Translation: The remaining ten percent will take ninety percent of the elapsed time.

“It’s ninety-five percent done,”
Translation: The remaining five percent will take ninety-five percent of the elapsed time.

“It’s code complete.”
Translation: Some code has been written. Features will be added later.

“The code is 95% reusable.”
Translation: Five percent of the source code is utterly and irretrievably lost.

“It’s feature complete.”
Translation: The feature list has been truncated.

“The UI’s still a little bit rough.”
Translation: What’s not to love about the A:> prompt?

“I’ve got an idea for a really cool feature. It’ll blow you away.”
Translation: Please give me an excuse to blow the schedule away.

“It’s Alpha ready.”
Translation: A lot of code has been written; none tested.

“It’s Beta ready.”
Translation: It’s Alpha ready.”

“The daily bug count is going down.”
Translation: The testers have been reassigned or The testers have had their email server removed.

“What? You wanted the results to display? On the screen? That’s gonna be hard.”
Translation: Here’s a good place to bury all the slippage. Major schedule revision coming.

“Ship it!”
Translation: The Development team is sick of this and wants to move on to something else. The customers will test it.

Category:/Plausible Deniability

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