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James Fidell wrote:
Nothing to do with MS pushing their 'nearly free' to educational institutions and free cut back IDE's and lousy how-to's everyone else then? Most of the 'really bad' programmers/sysadmins etc I came across came from the MS route. Most of the decent ones were what I would call classically trained. People who couldnt mock up a twenty screen GUI in 5 minutes - but had the advantage of actually being able to get the rest of it working as they'd learned computer science not point and click!tom wrote:This is the MS effect. "Computers are easy!"I don't think the blame for that can specifically be laid at Microsoft's door. Software houses of all shapes and sizes see the potential for increased profits if they can sell a product that makes working with computers easier, so that's the way the world goes.
I'd not argue that making programming easier means that more people without any formal software design and development training or experience end up writing code and as a result code quality does drop as a result in the general case. However it's also true that businesses (especially those with shareholders wanting a return on their investment) have a far more short-term focus than perhaps used to be the case, so a cheap, poorly-designed, quick-and-dirty solution that gets the cash in the bank fast is often preferred over a better design and implementation that perhaps costs more in the short term even if it would be more cost-efficient in the long run.
Programming is no harder than the things your trying to do in software.But, as you say a quick and dirty solution may give you a quick return on your cash, but will then bleed you dry in the future, costing many times the quick return you got earlier. A good software engineer will have all the skills necessary to try and ensure that doesn't happen. As should a good manager - they are one and the same to a large degree.
Web development, software design, controlling a big business - they all (should) consist of the same constituent parts. If you cant control one you cant control the other. If you've read and understand Knuth then you know 20* what the average manager needs to know, but could actually benefit enormously from.And don't even get me started on how many "web development" companies have no idea about change control, source code management, test design, regression testing... These people shouldn't be allowed near a codingjob. How many times have I heard "But the webserver has our only copy of the code"? Unfortunately the client is usually even more in thedark, barely able to specify what they actually want a website to do, let alone judge the quality of the mess they've been ripped off for.
Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html