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Being a "commercial programmer" let me add a few things.
I've worked in the payment systems department of WAVE (the software
house of Bank Austria) for 6 years. I didn't have the time to learn
anything about payment, the market etc. So I needed an analyst who
really knew the topic to write requirements and to communicate to me,
what the operating system wanted.
After 1 years, I knew enough about the topic to make my own suggestions
and to have useful meetings without my analyst. After 2 years, I was
fully able to organize my own stuff, do research were necessary, etc. IN
TIME. I could have done so before, but because of my lack of knowledge,
it would simply have taken too long. We had deadlines to meet, and we
had to be efficient.
After the 6 years at payment system, I changed position and am now in
the Controlling team of International Markets of Bank Austria. I knew
next to nothing about Controlling, and nothing about International
Markets, Money Markets, Bonds, Fonds and so on. EVERYTHING was new, and
there was no analyst to help me around. After one year of missed
deadlines, frustrating working situation, severe reduction of
performance bonus (40% reduction because of not meeting deadlines!), I'm
again able to operate on my own, understand the jargon, know what they
don't tell me etc.
So, if you want a programmer to be efficient in his first year at a
position where he knows nothing about the topic, you need to give him an
analyst who really knows his stuff.
And while this is good and reasonable, most programmers get used to
analysts. Instead of gaining knowledge on their own, they are forever
dependend on the analyst and stop thinking. Others fear the
responsibility for errors, and thus they want requirements, and if
something goes wrong, they can always blame the requirements. Others
have been working on their own, only to get requirement changes every
2nd day. They want requirements as a working contract, so that they can
finish what they're doing before the requirements change....
Hope that helps.
Rene
>At first I though that C++ was the culprit. The said professionals are
>very proud of using C++, and their work is of course much more
>complicated that it needs to be. But after this discussion I start
>seeing the problem lies deeper in the training background of "commercial
>programmers". They were not trained to do research and then make
>their own choices. They were trained to follow requirements. So these
>guys are having troubles in an alien world of science. Too bad for them,
>and also too bad for the lab.
>
>Thank you for making the "grubby world" more comprehensible to me.
>
>W.
>
>--- BlackBox
>--- send subject HELP or UNSUBSCRIBE to blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy>
>
>
>
>
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--- send subject HELP or UNSUBSCRIBE to blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Sun May 21 2006 - 21:37:02 UTC