Last year the arguments were about the thing you were building: who it was for, whether it should exist, who got left out. Those questions have not gone anywhere. But you are now building in a team, on top of other people’s work, for somebody who will still have your program after you have left the building — and that changes what there is to argue about. Software does not end when it ships. Most of its life happens afterwards, and most of the decisions that matter are made by people who were not there at the start.
| Discussion | The argument |
|---|---|
| Who Maintains This | Shipping is the cheap part. Then what? |
| When Code Hurts | The same harm, running a million times a day |
| Should It Exist | You can build it. That was never the question. |
| Whose Code Is It | Borrowing, crediting, licensing, contributing |
| What Happens When You Leave | Handover as an ethical act, not a formality |
These are not a unit bolted onto the side of the programming. They are the reason the programming is worth doing. The course ends with The Handover — a real project passed to somebody who has to live with it — and every one of these conversations turns up again while you are packing it.
One rule governs all of them, straight from Our Classroom Norms: we argue with ideas, never at people. That rule is under more strain this year, because now you are arguing about decisions your teammates made this morning. Come ready to change your mind. That is what the arguing is for.