programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood Application Engineering: Dead?
I used to be utterly floored when I read this new IEEE write-up by Tom DeMarco (pdf). See if you can inform why.
My early metrics guide, Managing Software program Jobs: Management, Measurement, and Estimates [1986], played a position inside the way numerous budding software engineers quantified operate and planned their assignments. In my reflective mood, I'm wondering, was its advice correct at the time, is it still relevant,
Accounting Jobs in NY.html, and do I still believe that metrics are a must for any successful application development effort? My answers are no,
Cheap Office 2010 Key, no, and no.
I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that software program engineering is an idea whose time has come and gone.
Computer software development is and always will be somewhat experimental. The actual computer software construction isn't necessarily experimental, but its conception is. And this is where our focus ought to be. It's where our focus always ought to have been.
If your head just exploded, don't be alarmed. Mine did too. To somewhat reduce the migraine headache you might now be experiencing from reading the above summary, I highly recommend scanning the entire two page write-up pdf.
Tom DeMarco is one of the most deeply respected authority figures in the software industry, having coauthored the brilliant and seminal Peopleware as well as many other near-classic software program project management books like Waltzing With Bears. For a guy of Tom's caliber, experience, and influence to come out and just flat out say that Software Engineering is Dead …
… well, as Keanu Reeves once said, whoa.
That's kind of a big deal. It's scary.
And yet,
Buy Office 2010, it's also a release. It's as if a crushing weight has been lifted from my chest. I can publicly acknowledge what I've slowly, gradually realized over the last 5 to 10 years of my career as a software developer: what we do is craftsmanship, not engineering. And I can say this proudly, unashamedly, with nary a shred of self-doubt.
I think Joel Spolsky, my business partner, recently had a similar epiphany. He wrote about it in How Hard Could It Be?: The Unproven Path:
I have pretty deeply held ideas about how to develop application, but I mostly kept them to myself. That turned out to be a good thing, because as the organization took shape, nearly all these principles were abandoned.
As for what this all means, I'm still trying to figure that out. I abandoned seven long-held principles about business and computer software engineering, and nothing terrible happened. Have I been too cautious in the past? Perhaps I used to be willing to be a little reckless because this was just a side project for me and not my main business. The experience is certainly a useful reminder that it's OK to throw caution to the wind when you're building something completely new and have no idea where it's going to take you.
Yes, I could add a lot of defensive software program engineering caveats here about the particulars of the computer software project you're working on: its type (mission critical, of course),
Office Professional 2010, its size (Google scale, naturally), the audience (millions of daily users,
Office 2007 Enterprise, obviously), and so forth.
But I'm not going to do that.
What DeMarco seems to be saying -- and, at least, what I am definitely saying -- is that control is ultimately illusory on software development projects. In case you want to move your project forward, the only reliable way to do that is to cultivate a deep sense of application craftsmanship and professionalism around it.
The guys and gals who show up every day eager to hone their craft, who are passionate about building stuff that matters to them, and perhaps in some small way,
Genuine Windows 7 Home Basic, to the rest of the world -- those are the people and projects that will ultimately succeed.
Everything else is just noise.
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