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> I can see your point. It is hard to disagree. However...
> substitute "hair dresser" or "car mechanic" for "developer"
> (and something related to those professions for "BB") and
> read again. The text will read just as relevant. What does
> this mean? Perhaps you are describing a general situation in
> any service industry?
>
Yes. This is the situation. Business is driven by the profit motive.
> Following this trail of thought, are you implying that
> programming has become service industry?
In business it is precisely that.
> Are you further
> implying that the mission of computer science departments is
> training new generations of employable servicemen and women?
This is not the function of universities etc., although many of them do
exactly that. This may be driven by the fact that companies such as Oracle
often 'sponsor' the course.
> How about science, education, enrichment, fulfilment, and
> other such that you can probably read on the Pepperdine
> University home page? Have all these been traded for
> marketable skills?
To a great extent, yes. Which is regrettable. Your lament (and I share it)
is well expressed by Fabian Pascal on his excellent site
http://www.dbdebunk.com/index.html, which is more specifically about the
lamentable state of knowledge of the relational model of data.
>
> Side note: perhaps I should explain my trail of thought. My
> neighbor used to be a cook in a restaurant. He worked hard
> and long hours.
[...]
> He is pulling himself from the mud in what clearly is a
> service industry.
This is one of the main routes into commercial IT & software development for
people who do not have a computing degree. I do not have a computing degree.
My education was in modern languages and linguistics, and I never expected
ever to use a computer. This was the 1970s. However, after a period of
unemployment the UK government trained me in COBOL. I was specifically
trained to be a commercial programmer writing commercial software, not a
computer scientist. I was very lucky in that my teacher, going against the
grain, taught me structured programming and introduced me to a Pascal-like
notation which gave me an insight into the wider world, which I have pursued
ever since. But the fact remains that people are specifically trained to be
commercial programmers, not to be computer scientists.
> He is following your and Bob's rules.
I must point out that I am merely describing the situation. It does not mean
that I approve of it.
> After reading your post
> I thought "how odd". Do the same rules also apply to
> bachelors, masters, and professors of computer science? Are
> these *the* rules of modern computing, no exceptions allowed?
> Something is missing here.
> Or am I missing something?
These are not the rules of computing. They are the state of play in the
world of commercial IT development, which is only a sub-domain of computing.
>
> > For those of us who become proficient in BB in our spare time as a
> > hobby, the opportunity costs are low, because BB competes
> with other
> > things we would do in our spare time.
>
> Not my case. I do not have "spare time". I do have to make
> choices between designing the next board, programming an
> FPGA, writing embedded C code, or programming in BlackBox
> (which I am not learning anymore, just using). All of the
> above are either current professional activities or future
> professional activities. The cost of not designing the next
> board is as high as the cost of not reading a book on optics,
> or not writing a book on programming, all of which I could
> potentially do. Life is too short to do it all, so I have to
> choose a subset of all potential activities, accomplishments,
> problems, and defeats.
> I guess here I am describing a situation of any scientist,
> engineer, or designer worth his/her profession.
The crucial distinction if that the choice is yours. In the grubby world of
commerce the developers do not have as much choice.
>
> I wanted to say that I am not describing a service person.
> But this sounded untrue. Most service people do have their
> hobbies. The majority must be just like you and me. So what
> is wrong with a service person not being fully driven by
> "opportunity costs"
> but rather doing something odd like, for example, learning
> and using BB?
>
> I think nothing would be wrong with someone not always
> following the "opportunity costs". I think there is something
> wrong with telling people they should always follow the
> "opportunity costs".
If each developer had the same degree of choice that you have, the company
would quickly collapse. We are programming in the large, as the expression
goes. This requires a great deal of coordination and teamwork. It is
extremely difficult, and is carried out under high pressure in a very
unstable commercial environment. Introducing to programmers the kind of
freedom of choice that you have would mean yet more variables that we can
not fully control, and would increase the difficulty of the task, and the
probability of failure by orders of magnitude.
Regards,
Bob
--- BlackBox
--- send subject HELP or UNSUBSCRIBE to blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Sat May 20 2006 - 09:06:36 UTC