The Blog of Greg

I’ve had a recurring discussion lately with people who are wanting to either implement or improve their build processes. The conversation is essentially the same regardless of which SCM they are using (CVS, Subversion, Clearcase or Perforce). There seems to be a strong tendency to shift away from the current tool because that will somehow “fix everything”. I’ve had the same discussion quite frequently about which web development framework to use. What most people seem to miss is that in most cases a tool is just a tool. Oh sure, you definitely want to pick the right tool for the job but if you have no defined process in Clearcase, then simply switching to perforce is not going to help you. A hammer can be used to break down a wall or build one. Similarly if you write crap code in PHP then simply switch to RoR or python just gives you differernt syntax to write crappy code in and a different set of implementation issues.

You need to look beyond the tool or the implementation to the root of the problems and fix those.