I just learnt the hard way why collaboration is *so* important in software projects.
I'm on a contract with a team where the front-end (an ASP.NET MVC) site is being written by an external company (we'll call them Websites Inc).
Webites Inc don't want to collaborate. They won't come into our offices (not even on the last week of a deliverable), they won't give us skype access or phone numbers of their developers.
I'm a contractor - I can't force my host company to get these guys to collaborate - to put the proverbial boot down as it were. To make them understand why collaboration is *so* important.
Ouch.
So I'm looking at Website Inc's code, and its not the best to be fair.
They're making some basic coding mistakes.
They're repeating themselves in code.
They're peppering their code with try/catch blocks.
They're returning different views from actions depending on whats happening.
They're wrapping stuff unnecessarily.
They're building in their own authenitcation layer (even though our api deals with it)
They're not naming controllers after resources
They're using controllers as a dumping ground for actions
etc etc etc
With a few friendly chats and discussions we could sort this stuff out really quickly.
But they won't collaborate.
So whats a chap to do ?
Well, I refactored it.
If someone refactored my code without discussing it I'd be pretty narked. I'd be pissed that they had not discussed why it was done, or why I was breaking MVC etc.
If we'd collaborated, it could have been a learning experience for both of us.
And that's the point - collaboration between software teams, and within software teams leads to cleaner, more maintainable code. Both sides learn something.
The way it is right now - no collaboration - can only lead to hurt feelings, and ruined relationships.
Its 2012. When will companies realise that collaboration & sharing leads to better software?
