[PLUG] Slightly OT: PCC software engineering program

[Jason Van Cleve]

On 05 Aug 2003 11:51:27 -0700
Brian Beattie <beattie at beattie-home.net> wrote:

> Who or what industry uses "coders" who can't design?  or maybe I don't
> know what a coder is.  In my 25 years of programming I don't think
> I've ever done any work that did not require some design.  Though I've
> been in the embedded systems/systems programming area.

A lot of app's can be slapped together without a formal design phase;
they just take a lot longer and tend to be full of bugs.  When I was
Director Of Tech' at a dot-com, I had a CS grad in my charge, who came
in with a steamroller approach to coding:  just open a new file and
start typing.  Very concrete thinker (no pun intended), but a very hard
worker, so he got stuff done--albeit with much backtracking.  I've known
a number of programmers like that, some even in the CSET program at PCC.
Most of them don't go very far.

But to clarify, I'm talking about code design, not product design.  If
you mean to say product design is essential, you're absolutely correct,
since without knowing what the software is supposed to do, there is
little hope of designing it well.  Alas, this, too, I know from
experience.

--Jason V. C.