June 3, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Wyatt Eurich (6/3/2008)
What I am hearing in Steve's editorials and in the posts, is that we are still trying to find a way of dealing with the pain in software development. Many keep looking for answers in other more mature fields, but we still have not found a good mentor.Yes, project management has helped, but it has not provided the magic bullet, and has created some new problems.
If your really interested in the subject, check out Scott Ambler. He has many interesting things to say about the lessons learned it this relativity new profession.
My own observation is that alot of the pain occures because software development requires a great deal of creativity and yet we try to pigeon hole it as an engineering field. Some of it is exacting, but some of it is very subjective.
Although I agree that creativity is an important part of software development, I think you overstate its importance. In my experience, much of what passes for "creativity" results merely from a lack of understanding of the particular business/problem domain, and a lack of knowledge of computing science fundamentals.
The idea that one can slap a solution together ("the simplest thing that could possibly work") and then somehow evolve it into an elegant design is one of the most wrong-headed (and, unfortunately prevalent) misapplications of the agile approach that I see in practice. My interpretation of Ambler's writings is that he leans in this direction, which is unfortunate given his influence.
TroyK
June 4, 2008 at 1:48 am
I'm afraid I think GSquared has the measure of it, and that "used car salesman" is an unfortunately apt analogy. I've been working in IT a good many years, and seen that a surprising percentage of IT "professionals" just aren't.
Sadly, at least in the UK, there's no level of work quality that's generally accepted and understood by non IT people as being what might be reasonable to expect, and so buying IT services at the moment is a bit like buying a used car before the bulk of the Trades Descriptions legislation was brought in. In other words, here be monsters.
People don't mind paying good money for quality, and are happy to do business when they know what they can expect. It's uncertainty they hate, and so long as there's no industry regulation geared at reducing that perceived uncertainty (and actually raising standards), we're going to have difficulty getting punters reaching into their wallets.
Semper in excretia, sumus solum profundum variat
June 5, 2008 at 8:25 am
It wasn't that long ago that I went through buying my first house. I was loaded down with tons of paper that had to be explained to me. Now I understood some of what I was reading; however, much of it was just "legalease" that made the process need a specialist. I have heard many developers complain about the design and code in an Access application that a user wrote or how "dumb" the user is.
The lawyer analogy hits the mark on the difficulty there can be in getting good requirements upfront. Many times the user thinks they know what they want and then changes as they see what can be done or thinks of more that needs to be done. The best projects I have been associated with are ones where I can get in and look at what the user does and then we discuss what the process will be and what they want the look and feel of the application to be. In some shops that isn't a luxury that one is given. Requirements are supplied by a business analyst or manager and development starts. The user gets to see the product when it is ready to test and then feedback is given. Then changes are made, maybe.
Lawyers also have a set of standard contracts that can be used over and over with little or no changes. Sounds like a good idea for code.:)
Q
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June 5, 2008 at 9:11 am
I forgot about buying a house! I've bought a few in my life, just did another recently, and there's quite a bit I don't understand in there. I suppose if there were issues, it would be a problem, but since most transactions work fairly smoothly, I've stopped reading every single page. Most of them are so standardized, I only read where things have been changed.
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June 8, 2008 at 1:18 am
:D--A Programmer brings out always a different output and could never satisfy what a client wants 100 Percent. A lawyer atleast could bring either success or failure. But a developer neither success or failure...Hey Heyyy....
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