1) Who told the project manager than an impossible schedule could be met? (Now, granted, if the project manager didn’t even ask anybody whether or not the schedule could be met, that’s something that needs to be fixed.)

2) Who caved in when project management demanded bad code to meet the impossible schedule?

A whole program can’t go wrong just because of some last-minute hacks that have to be made in order to ship the product. You don’t get something like Windows ME because of last-minute hacks. You get something like that because of consistent, long-term bad design.

So yes, project management definitely has its place in the hierarchy of responsibility. And I’m not saying bad management never ruined a project–in fact, it’s probably extremely common. But most of the bad software that I’ve had the chance to read the code of is just way too complex from the ground up.

Even under pressure, sometimes a developer needs to step back and say, “Okay, pressure like this is going to happen in the future. How can I make things simpler now to avoid things like that in the future?”

You’re right also that technically, I do mean bad programming. But I’ve encountered a ridiculous number of programmers (the vast majority I’ve known) who had no real concept of simplicity, and I tend to think that the vast majority of problems are caused by these programmers (since they comprise the majority of programmers I’ve met), not by good programmers under pressure who do bad.

-Max

Perhaps “good programming” is really what you meant by “good programmer”–it may or may not be the fault of the person who actually types out the code, there’s a lot of other people that go into the development process of complex software who may contribute just as much to the problems of the process