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An outrageous, insightful, and sadly accurate commentary on programming. I found this an extremely entertaining read and agree with most of it. It doesn't offer solutions, but certainly highlights a lot of the problems.
"Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for "Infinity" when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn't, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn't going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he's a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can't even find the cat.
Personally, I think things will only get better (including salaries) when software development is treated like other engineering disciplines.
(Score: 1) by mrMagoo on Thursday May 01 2014, @06:16PM
That's because they are describing a CMMI Level 5 shop.
A real one; not the fake Indian kind.
CMMI Level 5 is what you use when lives and billions of dollars are at stake.
A bridge would be a CMMI Level 5 job.
However, Level 5 is way inefficient. It's really kind of commercially unfeasible. Most production shops run at Level 3.
Software engineering needs more discipline and process. However, it doesn't need to have shackles attached to its ankles.
A lot of "traditional" engineers are pretty spiteful towards software, as they see us as a bunch of hippies.
I am in a position where I am trying to marry an ISO9001 process with badly-needed innovation and flexibility. The last few years, I let the process folks have their way.
The pooch was royally screwed.
I now need to force them to let go of their death grip, and work out a less restrictive methodology that will actually allow my organization to create competitive software.
Fun stuff.
I love the guy's rant.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." -Originally attributed to Nasrudin