taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (07/11/86)
This article is from Steven Gutfreund and was received on Tue Jul 8 20:42:04 1986 [from RISKS Digest] RE: Jan Lee (RISKS V3 N17) on the risks of not educating casual programmers. Your problem (in a nutshell) seem to be with the administration which needs to be made aware (educated) about the risks of under-educated programmers, than with the students themselves. To phrase this question in full generality: How do I make a person aware that his course of action contains risks which he is underplaying or not cognizant of? Classic examples of this are: a) Try teaching a child not to touch the hot stove. b) Teach your young and eager disciple that you have learned (via years of painful pratical experience) that he needs to take a more cautious approach (e.g. to design of large programming problems) c) Teach your manager (who lacks modern engineering skills) that the project plan is too risky. Approaches to attack this include: 1) Let the kid touch the stove (or the project go down the tubes) 2) Turn the issue into a confrontation (boycott the project meetings, threaten the child with loss of priviledges, etc.) 3) Try and instill the Fear of G-D in the person (long careful explanations, dissertations, memos, etc.) There seems to be a fundamental problem in any form of directly trying to educate the unaware individual. Since what you are basically trying to do is increase the persons level of anxiety, fear, or distrust of his own thought processes. Since these emotions are not normally identified with more "rational" attitudes, there is bound to be distrust of your motives. As long as you proceed with any of the above mentioned "direct" approaches, he is bound to be AWARE of your efforts, and draw the negative conclusions. It seems to me then that only indirect and subtle approaches will succeed. This conclusion should be seen as especially relevent to RISKS contributors since most of them seem to be involved in publicizing fears and anxieties. - Steven Gutfreund