Gartner on Assessing the Age of Software Languages and Tools
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From: Anonymous on 17 Jun 2008 05:24 In article <bce777ed-ce2c-4082-bb80-fb5cbb384bc6(a)a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, klshafer(a)att.net <klshafer(a)att.net> wrote: >On Jun 16, 10:01�am, Howard Brazee <how...(a)brazee.net> wrote: >> On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:09:51 -0500, Robert <n...(a)e.mail> wrote: >> >> >Managers are conservative, not developers. The same managers imposed > >>waterfall to retard change. >> >> They aren't doing that to retard change, they are using a methodology >> that they understand so that they can keep control. It often has the >> effect of retarding change, but it is better to understand their >> motivations. [snip] >It may be better (i.e. greater likelihood of project success) to have >a sub-optimal model / methodology that everyone can understand and >come to agree with, than to have an optimal model / methodology that >does not have the same "mindshare" in the organization, and which can >be divisive. An aphorism to recall might be 'The Perfect can be the enemy of The Good.' > >This type of "mindsharing" I extend to any number of aspects in the >team culture, such as business knowledge (subject matter expertise), >technical knowledge, values, work ethic, and so on. Unless groups are composed of perfectly-matched people it seems reasonable to conclude that some individuals may, of a given subject or facet of design, have less knowledge and others more. If it is expected that learning will be instantaneous then disappointment might result. DD
From: Anonymous on 17 Jun 2008 05:31 In article <m88e545tu89gne6rem9nh3flvrp5ohsnmv(a)4ax.com>, Robert <no(a)e.mail> wrote: >On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:01:09 -0600, Howard Brazee <howard(a)brazee.net> wrote: > >>On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:09:51 -0500, Robert <no(a)e.mail> wrote: >> >>> >>>Managers are conservative, not developers. The same managers imposed >>>waterfall to retard change. >> >>They aren't doing that to retard change, they are using a methodology >>that they understand so that they can keep control. It often has the >>effect of retarding change, but it is better to understand their >>motivations. [snip] >There seems to be a genetic human instinct for revenge, to identify and >punish the guilty, >despite lack of evidence it does any good as a preventive measure >(deterrent). There are two points which might be worthy of attention here: 1) If one is dealing with a 'genetic human instinct' then the response to confronting it may not be rational. 2) If it is true that to 'punish the guilty, despite lack of evidence it does any good as a preventive measure (deterrent)' then recidivism rates for all crimes would be 100%. DD
From: Howard Brazee on 17 Jun 2008 10:30 On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:31:53 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf(a)panix.com () wrote: >2) If it is true that to 'punish the guilty, despite lack of evidence it >does any good as a preventive measure (deterrent)' then recidivism rates >for all crimes would be 100%. People enter and leave lives of crime for various reasons. And they change their careers within a life of crime - for instance the pot smoker who while in jail learns how to make crime his career. With these variables, analyses of punishment and recidivism aren't straight forward.
From: Michael Wojcik on 17 Jun 2008 16:01 Pete Dashwood wrote: > "Michael Wojcik" <mwojcik(a)newsguy.com> wrote in message > news:g30t23030m3(a)news3.newsguy.com... > >> Many of the ones I meet are reluctant to try to make more than small, >> incremental improvements in their craft. They're not studying software >> development or computer science; they're not reading journals (even >> non-academic ones like _Dr Dobb's_); they're not trying out new languages >> or approaches. > > It is very hard to maintain enthusiasm and desire for knowledge over decades > (the "yearning for learning" has to be instilled at a very early age and has > nothing to do with IT as such...), having invested time and effort to > acquire a special skill which is paying the rent quite nicely, it then seems > counter intuitive to want to relace it. I suspect this is what leads to the > conservatism you noted. I recognize the (likely) truth of this, but I don't like it. :) I expect programmers to be interested in programming as an endeavor, not just a paycheck - so I expect them to be fascinated by clever tools and techniques, much as I expect woodworkers to paw through the latest Garrett Wade[1] catalog. But I also expect that expectation to be frequently unsatisfied. > After the stress of a day's work, most people are happy to leave it at that > and simply don't have the inclination (even if family life allowed them the > time) to get stuck into teaching themselves new skills. I know that in my > own case I have continually acquired new skills as a result of HAVING to, > rather than initially WANTING to. Sure. But we expect many professionals to at least spend some time attending to what is happening in their field. Certainly we can't expect most programmers to maintain the hacker culture of marathon coding sessions for the sake of experimentation into their adult lives. Surely there's a middle ground, though. Couldn't most of us find time to, say, download Dr Scheme and learn a little functional programming on lunch break, or play with Ruby on a rainy Saturday afternoon? > The point is, that even though I am > enthusiastic about new things, I still need to be pushed to study them. Sure. Not everyone is driven to be a computer scientist, and even computer scientists generally aren't excited by everything in computer science. I have a backlog of ACM journals myself, and I *do* find much of that stuff fascinating in its own right. >> How many developers are there out there who can't even be >> bothered to read something like thedailywtf.com, which is mostly amusing >> and only occasionally educational? > > Mea culpa... never heard of it. I'll take a look... :-) It's nothing special - I only mentioned it as an example of a way to learn a little bit, more or less by accident, while taking in a healthy dose of humor. (Not to everyone's taste, of course.) >> Many of the programmers I encounter, in person and online, are pretty >> content with the way things are - even when that means most of their >> efforts go to fixing bugs that should never have been introduced in the >> first place, even when it means constantly reinventing the wheel and doing >> things the hard way. > > Hey Michael, it IS a living... :-) Well, yes - but the "unexamined life" and all that... I suppose it's just hard for me to imagine putting that much effort into anything without engaging with it critically. [1] http://garrettwade.com -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
From: Michael Wojcik on 17 Jun 2008 16:08
docdwarf(a)panix.com wrote: > > 2) If it is true that to 'punish the guilty, despite lack of evidence it > does any good as a preventive measure (deterrent)' then recidivism rates > for all crimes would be 100%. Reoffending clearly partitions the set of former prisoners (ie, a given former prisoner will either commit another crime, or not), but it remains to be demonstrated that deterrence is equivalent to non-reoffense. I find it hard to believe that deterrence + recidivisim is a zero-sum game, and there are no other variables. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University |