[PLUG] Slightly OT: PCC software engineering program

[Brian Beattie]

On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 10:34, Daggett, Steve 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.
> 
>   I just did a project with those guys!  The whole organization seemed to be

which guys?

> pathologically opposed to sitting down and planning out the code *before*
> they started writing.  Their "design methodology" was "the programmer sits
> down and start writing C". 

I've never seen this, or if I did I must have ignored it and gone about
my the bigger the job, the more detailed the design, but lets not go
overboard and design a 747 when we want a toy airplane :)
 
> 
>   Now, I have seen that methodology work in the past.  I've even used it
> myself a time or two. ;-)  But it takes a very skilled or very dedicated
> programmer to pull it off.  The cats I was working with possessed neither
> trait.

Thats true, the better the staff, the less detail you need and on some
smaller stuff all you need are the goals.

> 
>   We went through dozens of false steps and software failures before the
> project finally tanked.  

I've seen over-design and redesign and redesign will kill a project too.

If it were easy anybody could do it.

When I have interviewed people I'm more concerned with their
intelligence than their experience had one guy with an advanced degree
in CS, completely useless.

-- 
Brian Beattie            | Experienced kernel hacker/embedded systems
beattie at beattie-home.net | programmer, direct or contract, short or
www.beattie-home.net     | long term, available immediately.

"Honor isn't about making the right choices.
It's about dealing with the consequences." -- Midori Koto