deSitter, #2217
syseng68k gave us a nice lecture on some IT stuff.
Well, someone else did ask
Having spent of lot of time trying to make money in the IT world (there
being no honorable way to make it in physics), I should point out the
other side - IT abstractions always fail, most IT projects fail, period:
on a team of 10 programmers, 1 is productive, 2 are helpful, 4 are a
waste of office chairs, and 3 are probably faking it. and have a resume
full of "exaggerations". No single discipline (such as it is) has
generated so much hot air. The current programming idioms are byzantine
beyond description, and have morphed eventually into "ends in
themselves". Every problem of any sort is bent around the idiom, and bad
performing bloatware is tolerated because "you can always throw more
hardware at it". There are more IT fads than Paris fashions. Keep that
in mind when you imagine a computer confusing your crew in a critical
situation.
I think you are being overly pessimistic, even bordering on alarmist in
that many people reading this thread won't understand that commercial IT
does not equal software engineering. The whole tone is embittered and
disparaging and does you no credit. Sorry to be blunt, but standards in
software engineering, when done right, are just as rigorous as any other
branch of engineering. It looks like you came into IT out of desperation
and just for the money, but many people, believe it or not, really are
dedicated and come to work every day with the intention of doing the very
best that they are capable of. Sure, a lot of companies have inept
management, but you can always move on, or like myself, work freelance
to get more variety, interesting challenges and more experience.
I do agree up to a point about "methodologies" and fashion, but many such
ideas are nothing more at root than formalisation of common sense and
methods used informally / ad hoc for decades. Such tools and techniques
can be very usefull, used intelligently, but are only ever part of the overall
development process.
There are more IT fads than Paris fashions. Keep that
in mind when you imagine a computer confusing your crew in a critical
situation.
Sorry, irresponsible alarmist nonsense. No other way to describe
the allusion that Paris fashion is in some way connected to aircraft
safety
...