[NCLUG] programming question

J. Paul Reed preed at sigkill.com
Sun Jul 1 16:53:57 MDT 2001


On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, mike cullerton wrote:

> ya know, this is really kinda cool. it seems to be getting easier and
> easier to write code these days, but that doesn't mean that any of these
> new 'programmers' (read me) know anything about software design. it's
> like people who are paid to produce code are becoming more dime a dozen,
> but folks who understand programming are harder to find.

Yeah... we were talking about it at one of our CPLUG meetings here.

Really, it's the separation of the architects from the carpenters... not to
belittle either.

I've been a member of dev teams which have really, REALLY good designers,
but they can't code their own linked-list... and then there are people who
can read those designs, and write really tight, maintainable, awesome
code... but if they had to design it from scratch, that'd make all sorts of
design errors resulting in problems down the road.

I think part of the reasoning behind this decision is that with the boom of
the 90's, SO MANY people joined computer science because they thought it
was "cool" and they could make a lot of money. Now that the bubble has
burst, just like in the business world, we're finding a lot of the chaff is
being stripped from the department, leaving those of us who were there for
the right reasons in the first place, just as in the dot-com world.

When I graduate, I won't consider myself a computer scientist, but rather a
software engineer. And as it becomes more critical that software is built
with a repeatable, accountable engineering methodology, I think those
requirements will put a new spin on the "science" of "computer science."

But that whole topic is a (n interesting) digression.

Later,
Paul
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  J. Paul Reed                preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
  Homer no function beer well without.  -- H. Simpson, "The Joy of Sect"




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