Things I've learned about writing software after 12 years
There's really one issue here. Budget.<p>You want two pairs of eyeballs on everything as you write it? Okay. Pay two guys.<p>You want complete test coverage? Okay. Can take as long as writing the code itself. Maybe more.<p>You want full documentation? Okay. Guy can't spend as much time on coding.<p>You want new APIs to be included? Okay. Guy's got to read docs and try samples. Less time.<p>What I've seen is you always end up with someone noticing that you could just spend all your time coding, and you would still produce an output that was ok. At least for small projects, or the start of large ones. It's as if there's a true productivity that's much lower than the imagined, and whoever is setting priorities doesn't notice it. He only sees code that's been written. He doesn't see technical debt. He doesn't see when a test catches a budding error. He doesn't see what that second pair of eyes is for. He doesn't know why you're always reading about some new thing.