Motivation of software professionals
in [Java Programming]
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From: Seebs on 14 Feb 2010 11:56 On 2010-02-14, James Kanze <james.kanze(a)gmail.com> wrote: > To be really effective, design and code review requires a > physical meeting. Depending on the organization of the project, > such physical meetings are more or less difficult. Nonsense. > Code review is *not* just some other programmer happening to > read your code by chance, and making some random comments on > it. Code review involves discussion. Discussion works best > face to face. IMHO, this is not generally true. Of course, I'm autistic, so I'd naturally think that. But I've been watching a lot of code reviews (our review process has named reviewers, but also has reviews floating about on a list in case anyone else sees something of interest, which occasionally catches stuff). And what I've seen is that a whole lot of review depends on being able to spend an hour or two studying something, or possibly longer, and write detailed analysis -- and that kind of thing is HEAVILY discouraged for most people by a face-to-face meeting, because they can't handle dead air. Certainly, discussion is essential to an effective review. But discussion without the benefit of the ability to spend substantial time structuring and organizing your thoughts will feel more effective but actually be less effective, because you're substituting primate instincts for reasoned analysis. I really don't think that one can be beaten. If what you need for a code review is for someone to spend hours (or possibly days) studying some code and writing up comments, then trying to do it in a face-to-face meeting would be crippling. Once you've got the comments, you could probably do them face-to-face, but again, that denies you the time to think over what you've been told, check it carefully, and so on. You want a medium where words sit there untouched by the vagaries of memory so you can go back over them. But! You do need people who are willing and able to have real discussions via text media. That's a learned skill, and not everyone's learned it. It is not universally true that discussion "works best face to face". Certainly, there are kinds of discussions which benefit heavily from face-to-face exposure. There are other kinds which are harmed greatly by it. Perhaps most importantly, many of the kinds which are harmed greatly by it *FEEL* much better face-to-face, even though they're actually working less well. The curse of being made out of meat is that your body and brain lie to you. Knowing about this is the first step to overcoming the harmful side effects. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
From: Andy Champ on 14 Feb 2010 12:46 Lew wrote: > > What, with a name like "Bloch" I wouldn't know what I'm saying? > I might point out that all _we_ could see is that you are called Lew... Andy
From: Martin Gregorie on 14 Feb 2010 13:14 On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:45:43 +0000, Seebs wrote: > I have no idea what you're talking about. I cannot point to any point > in the history of my exposure to free software (which predates the > 1990s) at which any major project had no central management. Linux was > pretty flaky early on, but then, in the early 1990s, all it had to do > was be more stable than Windows 3.1, which was not a high bar to reach > for. > About the best free software I remember from that era was Kermit. It worked and worked well and had ports to a large range of OSen and hardware of widely varying sizes: I first used it on a 48 KB 6809 running Flex-09 and still use it under Linux. It had an open development model though it was managed within a university department, so the project owners had pretty good control over it. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Lew on 14 Feb 2010 13:23 Lew wrote: >> What, with a name like "Bloch" I wouldn't know what I'm saying? Andy Champ wrote: > I might point out that all _we_ could see is that you are called Lew... You might, but that would be stupid. -- Lew
From: Nick Keighley on 14 Feb 2010 13:28
On 12 Feb, 21:22, James Kanze <james.ka...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 11, 9:33 pm, Andy Champ <no....(a)nospam.invalid> wrote: > > Lew wrote: > > > Andy Champ wrote: > > >> In 1982 the manager may well have been right to stop them > > >> wasting their time fixing a problem that wasn't going to be > > >> a problem for another 18 years or so. The software was > > >> probably out of use long before that. > > > > Sure, that's why so many programs had to be re-written in 1999. > > > Where do you get your conclusions? > > > Pretty well everything I saw back in 1982 was out of use by > > 1999. How much software do you know that made the transition? > > Let's see.. Operating systems. The PC world was... umm.. CP/M > > 80? Maybe MS-Dos 1.0? And by 1999 I was working on drivers > > for Windows 2000. That's at least two, maybe three depending > > how you count it, ground-up re-writes of the OS. > > With that almost all the PC apps had gone from 8 bit versions > > in 64kb of RAM to 16-bit DOS to Windows 3.1 16-bit with > > non-preemptive multitasking and finally to a 32-bit app with > > multi-threading and pre-emptive multitasking running in > > hundreds of megs. > > > OK, so how about embedded stuff? That dot-matrix printer > > became a laserjet. The terminal concentrator lost its RS232 > > ports, gained a proprietary LAN, then lost that and got > > ethernet. And finally evaporated in a cloud of client-server > > computing smoke. I know of system's that still poke data down 9600b lines. > The "standard" life of a railway locomotive is thirty or fourty > years. Some of the Paris suburbain trainsets go back to the > early 1970's, or earlier, and they're still running. > > > I'm not so up on the mainframe world - but I'll be surprised > > if the change from dumb terminals to PC clients didn't have a > > pretty major effect on the software down the back. > > Have you been to a bank lately, and seen what the clerk uses to > ask about your account? In more than a few, what you'll see on > his PC is a 3270 emulator. Again, a technology which goes back > to the late 1960's/early 1970's. travel agencies seem to run some pretty old stuff > > Where do you get your conclusions that there was much software > > out there that was worth re-writing eighteen years ahead of > > time? > > It depends on what you're writing, but planned obsolescence > isn't the rule everywhere. I believe the UK's National Grid (the high voltage country-wide power distribution system) wanted one-for-one replacements for very old electonic componants. What had been a rats nest of TTL (or maybe something older) was replaced with a board containing only a few more modern components (maybe one). But the new board had to have the same form factor, electrical power requirements etc. This becasue they didn't want to actually replace the computers they were part of. I know of software that runs on an emulated VAX. Sometimes software far out lives its hardware. |