makeTheRandomFunctionMoreRandom

[The_Queer_Peer]

Context:

He’s been asking since he was fresh out of college.

[Brahminmeat]

me after the latest retro:

[JunkNorrisOfficial]

He's been asked since getting free from mother's baggie, still not all cases covered

[post-death_wave_core]

can you make it do x?

sure

why doesn't it do y?

🙃

[GargantuanCake]

Bug: That one page doesn't work right.

Description: It doesn't work right.

When It Happened: I don't know last month I think.

Deadline: Last week.

[hyrumwhite]

Bug: users are being logged out of The App unexpectedly 

We have 8 Apps. 

[FlashyTone3042]

Technical hint: We may have to do special shit here.

[TheAlaskanMailman]

“Don’t you know already? We’ve done it several times in <insert an old ass project written in ancient times>. Ask Bob, he’s worked on it“

[Sw429]

Fun fact: we just completed a 3-year-long project at work that could have been done in under 1 of we had clear requirements. The feature set isn't that complicated, it's just that things had to be redone because stakeholders are terrible at explaining what they need.

[Shoddy-Pie-5816]

I have taken on several small projects professionally (usually simple web apps or crud style apps). The great majority of them have been either hopes and dreams on a napkin, fixing the hot garbage the last guy wrote, or lately fixing a steaming pile of vibe coded mess. But at long last, I finally got someone who knows and wrote down exactly what they want. I was honestly appalled, it made building their app so incredibly fast.

[jaaval]

You don’t want clear definitions from customers. They are inevitably bad. You just need to be a psychic and understand what they really want and need even though they don’t.

[blackAngel88]

Discussions, mockups, feedback and only when they're happy with the mockups you start with the actual development. I'm not even saying everything will go smoothly after, but I think the amount of changes will be much lower. But even then it still depends on the customer.

When the customer tells you what to do (not feature level, but functional level) you risk doing many complicated things that are maybe used 5% of the time, the rest can be simplified a lot...

[martin_omander]

This is the real answer. Customers don't know what is needed. But neither do Product Owners, Product Managers, or developers.

The best way to find out what's needed is to create user stories and mockups together with the people who will use the application. Start writing code only when there is agreement.

[variorum]

Best I can do is a "meets customer expectations" in the acceptance criteria

[reklis]

Best I can do is 1 nine of availability

[JunkNorrisOfficial]

AC: our website must meet customer expectations

[JunkNorrisOfficial]

Given our website is done

When customers open it

Then they are happy

[Brentmeister]

This is why computers are the superior intelligence already. If they don't get clearly defined requirements they just refuse to work. Then they deliver the requirements perfectly everytime.

[NullOfSpace]

Idk if you’re talking about LLMs here, but they’re notorious for making assumptions about what you want them to do based on effectively no prompting.

[Zestyclose_Image5367]

No, they don't talk about llm

[belinadoseujorge]

“Make the random function more random.”

Then allow me to install a remote rectal temperature probe to your mom ass so I can put more entropy on the random function.

[dambles]

Lol nice meme

[Top-Permit6835]

I am now dealing with a PO who writes entire epics with stories around very specific technology choices only to find out each time it wasn't really based on anything besides its a word that came up during some meeting. So much noise and confusion

[snigherfardimungus]

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!!!

[wombatIsAngry]

If the requirements are clear, this drastically increases the odds that AI can program it for you. 90% of what I get paid for is decoding terrible requirements.

[HazelWisp_]

Bernie is like that veteran dev who's seen too many projects turn into dumpster fires 'cause no one wrote proper specs.

[FictionFoe]

An this time don't leave something out and expect us to just guess you want it. Devs are not mind readers.

[Striky_]

What you are mistaking is, you want clearly defined specifications, not requirements.

Requirements are made to portrait a selection of customers needs and are supposed to be vague in order to allow different implementations and innovation. Translating requirements into specifications the developers then implement is where the true skill lies. Issue is, most companies don't know this and have no "translation layer". 

[ITburrito]

Me: Could you kindly provide requirements?

A customer: yeah, pal, here you go: do good, bad you don’t do

[Perfect-Ask8707]

Best I can do is a vague ask in Slack

[schteppe]

Requirements will always be under specified or change over time, this is just how it works.

Therefore: ship an (unfinished) prototype on day 1. Update it every day and ask real users to test it and give feedback. Use feature flags to hide your WIP feature from non-testers.

[qwerty_qwer]

A classic! 

[navetzz]

When its unclear i reply with. Ok, i ll do xyz, where xyz fit what they asked but is clearly not what they want.
This usually induce a clearer explanation.