The cost of good Programmers/Developers.

[mansr]

Stolen from elsewhere:
"Actually, it's only Agile if it comes from the Agile region of France. Otherwise it's just bad Project Management with fancy names for meetings."

Also stolen from elsewhere:

 

[Old Listener]

IMHO, 'Agile' has been adopted too widely. It is most applicable to non-critical apps or web services. but much less so to critical system development.

There's also been a growth in the 'paradigm market', selling courses for methodologies. the original 'Agile' proponents have recently come out against the formal 'Agile' methodologies that have grown like topsy.

or
http://codemanship.co.uk/parlezuml/blog/?postid=1580

From the latter:

Good post, good quote.

"Pioneers of early lightweight methods were always clear about this: decisions should be made by people with the necessary expertise and experience to make those decisions."

I had similar thoughts after reading several previous posts. A project is in trouble if the manager(s) responsible for the project don't have their own understanding of what's involved.

Gurus selling s/w development methodology have been around for several decades. Management treats s/w development as a disease and searches desperately for a cure.

 

[wiggum]

Some of mine best friends are top developers specialized in for instance the Oracle environment. Regarding checking code one of them had several times overcome an culture difference. When a change in code has to be done that is complex an critical (let say a change in the source code for international payment on the institutional level) it is divided in lets say 2 developers. When the developers are done with writing their code both of them are checking each other code. After his check an testing both of the developers have to explain their work an advice their manager as a team. If 2 dutch developers check each other code an their is any criticism/comment from the other developer when valid it is accepted the code could be changed so the quality improves. Basically you learn from your mistakes or less experience. He had several times the situation that he worked with developers from India en Iraq. When he checked their code an the discussion with the manager was done he was more or less threatens not to speak any more that negative about them in an aggressive manner. It is not done in their culture to speak critical with best intentions about somebody despit a crappy code the manager eventually had to intervene.

I don't want to sound rude, but your English writing is hard to follow. Are you from India?

 

[Snarfie]

I don't want to sound rude, but your English writing is hard to follow. Are you from India?

No from holland by the way how is your dutch

 

[Soniclife]

Management treats s/w development as a disease and searches desperately for a cure.

I see it more as companies searching for tools and methods to fix poor management, rather than addressing the simple fact that most managers especially in IT, and especially when the managers are ex coders*, are not good at managing. My guess is many people can have long careers without ever being managed by someone who is good at it, it's that rare, but like good teachers you don't forget them when you do.

* Many coders, especially the good ones that often get promoted, are somewhere on the artistic spectrum, which makes many of us hard to manage, and terrible at management. But get it right and amazing things happen.

 

[Cosmik]

Off at a slight tangent I heard a discussion (BBC This Week) regarding the appointment of the new EU top leadership roles: apparently there's a feeling that Eastern Europe should have been represented, but for reasons of wanting gender parity they chose differently because of the few women on offer. This strikes me as highly significant: potentially changing the course of history for the sake of a symbolic gesture to appease, basically, the nobodies on twitter. This is not a comment on the competence of the women; just an observation that identity politics may have taken precedence over real politics on this occasion.

Question: are we confident that such gestures will not compromise safety critical engineering in the future? I'm not concerned with what those 'identity groupings' are, merely that someone, somewhere is attempting to achieve quotas in the face of a different reality; 'competence' is not the sole criterion of who is employed or promoted any more.

Big business in particular seems to be getting in on the virtue signalling act, and they are the businesses that build big stuff. And they're large enough for the results of such gestures to be 'dissipated' throughout the organisation for quite a while before problems become visible.

I find it hard to see how it will not happen, at some stage.

 

[wiggum]

No from holland by the way how is your dutch

I don't know Dutch. I have worked with Indian developers, and they write English the way you write. Without proper punctuation and run-on sentences.

I apologize if it came across as rude.

 

[Snarfie]

I don't know Dutch. I have worked with Indian developers and they write English the way you write. Without proper punctuation and run-on sentences.

I apologize if it came across as rude.

Ha ha No offense given.. None taken. Lot of times i use my crappy mobile phone to react (sticky fingers) so besides of (incorrect) construction of sentences i miss sometimes also letters. English is not my native language. I'm quite impressed how maney members react on this topic. I guess that on linkedin you will not find this kind of discussion a lot.

 

[amirm]

Ha ha No offense given.. None taken. Lot of times i use my crappy mobile phone to react (sticky fingers) so besides of (incorrect) construction of sentences i miss sometimes also letters.

I don't how you all are able to type so much on a phone. I can only type one short sentence and after that, want to throw the phone at the wall.

 

[amirm]

Question: are we confident that such gestures will not compromise safety critical engineering in the future?

The good or bad reality is that no matter how much push there is to bring women into engineering, the supply is so small that the profession for the foreseeable future will be male dominated.

I have seen issues with token hiring of women while at the same time, having had the pleasure of having women on my team that brought huge value. Some had much stronger leadership skills than men. Indeed the fond nickname for one of my female general managers was "take commander!" She would take no prisoners and get the job done across large scale (200+ engineers, program managers and testers).

 

[Soniclife]

I don't how you all are able to type so much on a phone. I can only type one short sentence and after that, want to throw the phone at the wall.

Learn how to use the keyboards properly, you can get surprisingly quick at it. I prefer the sliding your finger about the screen style of input, I've no idea what magic code makes it work given my inability to even spell but it usually guesses what I'm trying to type.

 

[captain paranoia]

Positive discrimination is discrimination...

We are involved in outreach programmes with schools, in both WISE and STEM programmes. The division (research) of the company I work for has a significantly higher proportion of women engineers than is usual. We are rightly held up as an example for the rest of the group.

I have been working closely with a female colleague from another division for the last couple of years, working with a consortium of other companies. It is very common for her to be the only woman in the room. She was even once asked if she had come to takes notes.

 

[LTig]

Some of mine best friends are top developers specialized for instance in the Oracle environment. Regarding checking code one of them had several times overcome an culture difference. [..]
He had several times the situation that he worked with developers from India en Iraq. When he checked their code an the discussion with the manager was done he was more or less threatens not to speak any more that negative about them in an aggressive manner. It is not done in their culture to speak critical even with best intentions about somebody despit a crappy code the manager eventually had to intervene.

Yep, seen here with a coworker from India. A brilliant scientist but unable to discuss his work with colleagues because he took any question with the slightest doubt as a personal attack. Maybe he was not a real scientist then despite his phd ...
EDIT: don't mean that all people from India are like this! We have several other colleagues from India which are very friendly and handsome people.

 

[restorer-john]

I don't how you all are able to type so much on a phone. I can only type one short sentence and after that, want to throw the phone at the wall.

Exactly. I feel the same.

 

[LTig]

The good or bad reality is that no matter how much push there is to bring women into engineering, the supply is so small that the profession for the foreseeable future will be male dominated.

I'm not so sure. Our department (sw dev) hired approximately 50% women and 50% men within the last 5 years. Very few engineers though but mostly scientists (physics, chemistry) with phd.

 

[amirm]

I'm not so sure. Our department (sw dev) hired approximately 50% women and 50% men within the last 5 years. Very few engineers though but mostly scientists (physics, chemistry) with phd.

Definitely different than engineering.

 

[mansr]

I don't how you all are able to type so much on a phone. I can only type one short sentence and after that, want to throw the phone at the wall.

Oh, I just type a few words into an AI and let it complete the text.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Learn how to use the keyboards properly, you can get surprisingly quick at it. I prefer the sliding your finger about the screen style of input, I've no idea what magic code makes it work given my inability to even spell but it usually guesses what I'm trying to type.

Swyping yes. I eventually reached the point where I could swype as fast or nearly so as I type. I type pretty well. The biggest thing is if using jargon or unusual abbreviations it will suggest something else. You have to keep an eye out for that. Now it took dozens and dozens of hours to do this. I might never have gotten that up on it and comfortable with it. But I spent a few months at hospitals and was using my phone to communicate quite often. Carrying a laptop wasn't convenient enough. I did at times use a small bluetooth keyboard with the phone, but once I had swyping down didn't need it anymore. Like many things, make a commitment to use swyping, and in time you'll do fine. As odd as it seems at the beginning.

 

[amirm]

Oh, I just type a few words into an AI and let it complete the text.

That is my secret too. The key is the length of my posts. They loger they are, the more AI help they received...

 

[Blumlein 88]

That is my secret too. The key is the length of my posts. They loger they are, the more AI help they received...

Do you end up at y loger-heads in the end.