xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (04/12/91)
[The original article _really_ needed a "Followup-To: news.groups"; please don't widely crosspost an article without a chosen followup again; it just trashes the other, uninterested newsgroups unnecessarily.] alex@telecdn.uucp (Alex Laney) writes: > This is of course, way out in left field... I'll say. > In the process of pruning my 'comp' tree, I noticed that there are a > lot of 'second-tier' newsgroups, that are related as computer > engineering-type newsgroups. > I would like to put forth the proposal to rename the following > newsgroups to reflect this: > comp.cog-eng --> comp.software-eng.cognitive OR > comp.software-eng.user-interface > comp.groupware --> comp.software-eng.groupware > comp.multimedia --> comp.software-eng.multimedia > comp.object --> comp.software-eng.object > comp.realtime --> comp.software-eng.realtime > comp.software-eng --> comp.software-eng.misc > comp.specifications --> comp.software-eng.specifications > The current names are slightly vague but the discussions are > predominately software engineering in nature. etc. Software engineering is about the _science_ of creating software; that is the subject matter of comp.software-eng. For many of us, with the snake oil sales of "software metrics" dominating the study, as if the incredibly simplistic measures currently being touted were somehow useful tools, software engineering is a pseudo-science, right up there with, and in the grand style of, say, phrenology. Just because you can measure something, say, bumps on a head or tokens in a program, doesn't thereby prove that you've _learned_ anything by your measurement, but the worship of numbers (to the exclusion of considerations as to whether they have meaningful implications) in the science fields will always be with us, P.T. Barnum reminds. The other newsgroups you propose to toss into the traveling huckster's cart concern themselves with the _practice_ of creating software in certain styles or fields of interest, a useful and practical quite different kettle of eels. Were I a participant in one of those groups, and Procrustus suggested with force that I sleep in the bed sized for the phrenologists, I'd feel _slimed_. How about we don't do this? Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>