The majority of this article tackles the over-reliance on software metrics, an issue that many people have brought into question over the last decade or so, and he does a good job of summarising the problem with it. However, in the last two paragraphs he attempts to tar the rest of the Software Engineering discipline with the same brush, painting it as a set of overtly rigid tools bureaucratic managment might use to crush the life out of any software project.
I've studied as a computer scientist and as an engineer (electronics) and it's been my constant impression that those trained in the former completely misunderstand the latter. The engineering mindset is one of creative problem solving, using heuristics, tools and systems that have worked well in the past to guide you to your eventual goal, and ignoring them if they don't make sense or will misguide you. Instead many programmers seem to want to find the general algorithm for development. It doesn't exist and in a way its our philosophers stone, it's pursuit wastes time, effort and money. Instead we should be happy with the ever expanding toolkit of techniques the modern developer has at their beck and call whenever they're necessary. That's the real essence of Software Engineering, even if some parts of the industry have gotten lost over the past few decades.
Frankly, this article's title is blatant troll-bait and I really should know better.
I think its Software Engineering as a movement, especially in the 90s, that has completely misunderstood engineering. While engineering may have a lot to offer the making software, the movement that is (or perhaps was) Software Engineering did try make a set of overtly rigid management tools.
It's by the IEEE. Most of these "elitist clubs" tend to knock out this drivel by the truck load to try and make their members feel relevant and manipulate the industry. Open Group, IEE (UK version of IEEE) are just the same. Fortunately, people just aren't interested any more.
I won't mod you down, because I think your view needs to be out there. But read the article - it hardly seems like paean to any doctrine. Rather, it seems like an insightful look back on a long career.
I would have seen this as good news, if I hadn't read this article the other week: http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/ning-exposed-tech-comp... . I noticed Marc stopped blogging just before the first questionable action that's reported in the article. Marc's blog posts in 07/08 were fantastic stuff, but the behaviour of his current business, with no reasonable response that I could find, undermines his otherwise good reputation. Does anybody know more about what's going on here?
I don't think I get this. They could have put together a blog or similar website which they pushed articles of this type out to once a month, with all the convenience of linking and being able to view the content (there's very little imagery in this edition) in whatever platform you already use. Instead they've chosen a digital imitation of a physical magazine, which you need some kind of specialised reader to read, wont be indexed by google and will make it hard to reference. Am I missing something?
I have to say it's a pleasure to read something in this format rather than just another blog site. I think it gives a different feel, a clean-ness, something I can't really explain, that's missing from most websites. Maybe it's simply the typesetting?
In the "Up Front" section they make it clear that they're trying to re-create the magazine feel, and that they're experimenting with this, so I expect it will change. I look forward to seeing where it ends up.
It will make it easier to cite, Issue X, pages 1 - 3, and since they chose pdf there is less of a chance that they'll update/change it. I agree it breaks the web a little, you can't comment on articles or link directly to them, but that's a trade off I'm sure they thought through.
Google indexes pdf's so I don't know where you go the idea that they didn't.
It would also be easier to have conversations about. Instead of forcing everyone who wants to talk about a particular article to download the whole PDF, you can link them directly to the article (and with a better Web, you could link them to the exact sentence and paragraph you want to draw their attention to).
I might be an edge case here, but I regularly print web pages to PDF so that I can ship them around to various devices when I'm travelling and either don't have access to the internet, or I'm not able to connect (on an airplane, for example).
Also, a PDF reader is specialized in the same way a browser is specialized; they're both essentially ubiquitous now.
Except it's not really a "fitting conclusion" to the article: almost all the other factors the article cites are irrelevant or inconsequential. "Too big, too fast", "Too spread out", and so on are just quibbles: the fundamental problem was a lack of compelling content. The rest is just incidental, IMHO.
I remember when I was Time's person of the year back in 2006. Which is to say I'm not sure how much can be read from this. It's amusing they had the wit to run with it and I'm intrigued to see if this does anything to raise the profile of 4chan.
This is very similar to the rants I've given and heard from plenty fellow students back when I was still studying a few years ago. I can see exactly where it's coming from, and yet I can't agree. Partly it's the blatant snobbery of it, which I know from my own experience. It's frustrating to see folk with no interest in the discipline do better because they're more focussed on getting a first than actually learning anything.
The thing is, the industry is a lot bigger than it seems when you're at university. Developers/programmers are actually a pretty small part of it. For example, software testing/validation is a job in itself which can involve very little coding. Professional documenters are paid to write about software and do very little coding, but an understanding of the field is still useful to them. And lets not forget the good old ranks of management, forever considered to be a complete waste of time that gets in the way of "just hacking shit out". Except it turns out people don't want shit.
So basically, just because somebody is on your course and doesn't want to spend all night fiddling with their ubuntu installation, reading HN and learning the stuff you know that you'll need for the job you want, doesn't mean they wont be able to hack it in industry. If anything the industry could do with more normal people. Preferably ones with boobs.
A friend of mine has degrees in english and computer science, and works as a technical writer. While his job does sit at the intersection of those two fields, what he learned in college is laughably underutilized on a day-to-day basis.
If someone just wants to work adjunct to software development, why should they take the same courses as people who want to be software developers? A class that presents programming as a medium of communication rather than an exercise in minutiae seems like it would get a lot more traction with people who don't see the glamor in spending their nights and weekends in front of a computer screen.
I'm certainly not/not going to be the world's most stellar programmer, but I have to look at the other people in my class who are obviously holding up the rest of the students through their complete misunderstanding of the material.
Sure there is potential in everyone, and most likely a career path for any number of variables involved in producing a quality software product. But when a person is taking their second class in a programming language, and you ask them to show you their switch statement, and all you get is blank stares, is it your place to think that they need to find something else?
Obviously this is all from my personal experience, and I don't profess to know all the answers. But, as a general question, how do you handle a fellow student who is obviously not getting the coursework, and if they achieve the same degree will lessen the effectiveness of said degree from the same institution?
To a certain extent, it doesn't matter that much. This is a problem that affects most universities and most courses. Ultimately I became resigned to focusing on what I wanted from my course, which was to learn some knowledge and skills I found interesting. Also a degree seems to act as a sign that you're capable of getting a degree, and putting up with the bullshit that entails these days. It doesn't say anything about how good a developer you are or will become, or what kind of "Computer Scientist" you are. That's part of the reason why companies have interview processes, because you can only glean so much from a CV.
So, my advice is to give the guy a hand if you have time, you'll probably find he has skills that compliment your own which could come in useful someday. Also, try to stop caring so much about how your peers are performing, and focus on exploiting the access to people and resources available to you so you can get what you want out of the course. Ultimately there's very little you can do to change the behaviour of people your only mildly acquianted with.
Yet another generic, vacuous article about twitter, of the skeptical variety. I suspected there might actually be some insight in this one since it got posted here, but it's as inane as the rest of them (deliciously ironic given most articles of this type scold twitter and it's users for their inanity). For once I'd like to read an article that at least muses on why folk tend to be confused when they first join twitter or why it seems to have a marmite effect (i.e. you either love it or you hate it). I'm getting quite tired of this sort of banality however.
goes off to check his twitter feed for something more interesting
I think the number of vacuous articles about Twitter is partly due to its sudden popularity (obviously), but also because it's harder to discover the use of such a service. Sure, it's largely used for inane updates, but obviously it can have some interesting uses, such as keeping up with very current news/trends and social activities (ie: going to the bar at X, anyone up?).
However, to find out about these uses can take quite a bit of searching, especially if the reporter doesn't know anyone on Twitter. Granted, this is supposed to be the author's job, but I can understand that they wouldn't want to waste their time on what appears to simply be a worthless fad.
Really, I think the only way we'll see a decent article on Twitter is from someone who's used the service for a while, and has actually taken the time to find the signal among the noise. However, as most of these articles were probably pumped out within a few days due to deadlines, we won't find something like this among the major newspapers.
I observe a tremendous amount of overlap between the links on HN and the links in my Twitter feed. I think it all comes down to who you're following, which is one reason why it's so useful: you can fine-tune your stream of links very easily to keep them synchronized with your tastes and interests.
I was really hoping I'd get asked to sign-in before I could read that article.
More to the point though, twitter's issues tend not to be the kind of thing you're looking for in beta testing. You can't test scale with a limited number of users by defintion. A service which still loses data in corner cases, exposes private information unintentionally and so on is better off in an acknowledged private beta than suffering the incredibly bad press and resentment of users which will arise in these scenarios.
Also, not all software is built equal. Twitter is strongly affected by network effects, the more people using it, the more valuable it becomes, so getting people signed up is more important than ironing out every bug. However the likes of gmail is weakly affected as you can still email all of your mates whether they use gmail or not. Spotify's value doesn't particularly increase when new users join it, but it does when it's catalogue is expanded.
Gmail also used invite codes, which - at the beginning - caused false scarcity, making getting a gmail invite code itself valuable. That's markedly different than just closing off unapproved signups.
I've studied as a computer scientist and as an engineer (electronics) and it's been my constant impression that those trained in the former completely misunderstand the latter. The engineering mindset is one of creative problem solving, using heuristics, tools and systems that have worked well in the past to guide you to your eventual goal, and ignoring them if they don't make sense or will misguide you. Instead many programmers seem to want to find the general algorithm for development. It doesn't exist and in a way its our philosophers stone, it's pursuit wastes time, effort and money. Instead we should be happy with the ever expanding toolkit of techniques the modern developer has at their beck and call whenever they're necessary. That's the real essence of Software Engineering, even if some parts of the industry have gotten lost over the past few decades.
Frankly, this article's title is blatant troll-bait and I really should know better.