rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) (10/06/89)
William Thomas Wolfe writes: >...[Dunning had said... > > i would hope that the `software engineering philosophy' does not > > preclude self-education. > > Of course not. The point is that engineering and "playing" > are two entirely different processes... Rubbish. With rare exception, the best software is produced by people who enjoy what they are doing--and I mean "enjoy" in the sense of being entertained by the process of constructing it. You cannot carve out a human's positive emotions into two piles according to some abstract dictum (as "Let's see, sincerity goes here; toss amusement over there; passion goes there; devotion here...") Software which can be produced by some tight-lipped, strait-laced, stone serious process is software which should be bought off-the-shelf. > The engineer's psychic rewards come from having engineered a superb > product, on time and under budget. These are tied to the objectives, > and not to the means of getting there. Multiple flaws here. I took on the "on time and under budget" fallacy in a previous posting. Just for perversity, I'll point out that "engineered a superb product" may or may not make sense. Sometimes what is called for is, at best, a hack. >>Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.<< The time and effort expended has to be kept in proportion to the desired characteristics of the end result. The extreme goal orientation in "tied to the objectives and not to the means..." is, I think, an ideal way to drive a software effort toward the "get it out the door" attitude. I've had to fix/maintain/modify too much crappy software that was developed with an eye only on its objectives. The failing was precisely that the (pseudo)engineers who created it didn't give a damn about, let alone enjoy, "the means of getting there." (I also have a strong personal objection to someone like Wolfe telling me I should be goal-driven. That's a loser's philosophical orientation to the world, as far as I'm concerned...and although that's another posting that belongs in a nontech newsgroup, Wolfe's misconceptions of "the engineer's psychic rewards" are similarly out of place here. I'm a damned good software engineer, and I have been for a long time, and I do it without being goal-driven.) -- +---------+ Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com ico!rcd (303)449-2870 | In this | 4th annual MadHatterDay [10/6/89]: | style | A Thousand Points of Madness |__10/6___|