A New Development Term: Blackfield Development

I’ve been through the trenches of the consulting world, the good the bad the ugly, I’ve had the the full time jobs, and the freelance work, etc, etc etc. I’ve experienced projects from the ground up, maintenance projects and projects that didn't even leave the whiteboard. During the years of participating in many projects I sometimes get to a point where I work on something so frustrating that I want to pull my hair out.I want to scream at the computer, yell obscenities then storm off and go have a drink at the local pub. I’ve noticed that this type of development is usually maintenance work or even new development on top of legacy code. Usually, this is known as Brownfield development.

Not today. Today is the beginning of a new era. Over the last few days I’ve dealt with one of these nightmare hair pulling out tasks that drive you up the wall. Upon thinking about it today I’ve decided that tasks that are centered around legacy code (again, brownfield development), yet drive you crazy beyond belief will now be known as …

BLACKFIELD DEVELOPMENT

Why “Blackfield” one might ask?

Blackfield development is the type of development where you’re given a task which is very similar to walking through a pitch black cave without a flashlight. You have to stumble, fall down, bang your head, cuss, scream, run into walls just to cross into the next chasm of pain. An example of this this kind of development: a client gives you a task and the code is so obscure that you cannot follow a single logical execution path. There are no unit tests, you cannot get it to compile or run half of the time and your deadline is tomorrow. The good news is that you have the team who wrote the original code sitting next to you. Don’t be fooled my friend, you are not in the clear yet … if you ask them a question – they don’t know the answer. Therefore you’re left stumbling down a pitch black cave of code nightmares that is full of binary monsters waiting to hop out of the screen and bite your face.

Yeah. Seriously… blackfield development – its serious business. Development so rough it hurts.