The Tar Pit

The Woes of the Craft --职业的苦恼

Not all is delight, however, and knowing the inherent woes makes it easier to bear them when they appear. 

（然而这个过程并不都是喜悦的，我们只有事先了解一些编程固有的烦恼，这样，当他们真的出现的时候，才能更加坦然的面对。）

The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. 

（在这方面计算机像传奇的魔法。）

Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, 

（为了完美而去调整需求。）

Next, other people set one's objectives, provide one's resources, and furnish one's information. 

（其次，由其它人来设定目标，提供资源，配置信息。）

One rarely controls the circumstances of his work, or even its goal. 

（编程人员很少能控制工作情况，甚至目标。）

It seems that in all fields, however, the jobs where things get done never have formal authority commensurate with responsibility. 

（在所有的领域中，对要完成的工作，很少能提供与责任相一致的正式权威。）

In practice, actual (as opposed to formal) authority is acquired from the very momentum of accomplishment. 

（现实情况中，实际的权威来自于每次任务的完成。）

These are often maldesigned, poorly implemented, incompletely delivered (no source code or test cases), and poorly documented. 

（而往往这些程序设计的并不合理，实现拙劣，发布不完整，或者文档记录的很糟糕。）

So he must spend hours studying and fixing things that in an ideal world would be complete, available, and usable. 

（所以系统人员不得不花时间去研究和修改，而他们在理性情况下本应该是可靠的、完整的和可用的。）

The next woe is that designing grand concepts is fun; finding nitty little bugs is just work. 

（下一个烦恼是，设计新的概念虽然有趣，但是实际的工作却是无休止的查找bug。）

With any creative activity come dreary hours of tedious, painstaking labor, and programming is no exception. 

（伴随着创造性活动的，往往是枯燥沉闷的时间和艰苦的劳动，编程也不例外。）

Next, one finds that debugging has a linear convergence, or worse, where one somehow expects a quadratic sort of approach to the end. （另外，人们发现调试和查找是呈线性收敛的，或者更糟糕的是，具有二次方的复杂度）

So testing drags on and on, the last difficult bugs taking more time to find than the first. （因此测试一拖再拖，查找最后一个错误竟会比第一个错误花费更多的时间）

The last woe, and sometimes the last straw, is that the product over which one has labored so long appears to be obsolete upon (or before) completion. 

（最后一种苦恼，有时也是一种无奈，当购入大量辛苦的劳动，产品在即将完成或者最终完成的时候，却已显得成就过时）

Already colleagues and competitors are in hot pursuit of new and better ideas.

（可能同事和竞争对手已在追逐新的、更好的构思）

Already the displacement of one's thought-child is not only conceived, but scheduled.

（也许替代方案不仅仅是在构思，而且已经在安排了）

The real tiger is never a match for the paper one, unless actual use is wanted. Then the virtues of reality have a satisfaction all their own.

（只有实际需要的时候，才会用到最新的设想，因为所实现的系统已经能满足要求，体现了回报）

Of course the technological base on which one builds is always advancing.

（当然产品开发所基于的技术不断在进步）

As soon as one freezes a design, it becomes obsolete in terms of its concepts.

（一旦设计被冻结，在概念上就已经开始陈旧了）

he obsolescence of an implementation must be measured against other existing implementations, not against unrealized concepts.

（实现落后与否应根据已实现的系统来判断，而不是未实现的概念）

For many, the joys far outweigh the woes, and for them the remainder of this book will attempt to lay some boardwalks across the tar.

（对于许多人而言，其中的乐趣远大于痛苦，对于这本书的剩余部分来说）