Is anyone else following the Hal Helm's, Steve Nelson conversations series? I think the series is really awesome, but I have to disagree with a certain point they are trying to make. Here's a snippet:
--- Steve: So, to be a really good programmer, you have to use both halves of your brain. Hal: I think so, yes. The fellow teaching the class, Roy Williams, said that while we all have preferences in the way we approach things, we can train ourselves to use the other half of our brain. I found that fascinating. We did some exercises where we picked a topic and wrote about it using left-brained techniques in one pass and then approached it again using right-brained techniques. The more we went into this, the more parallels I saw with programming. Fusedocs are how we make the transition from the holistic, big-picture, right-brained stuff to the logical, left-brained thinking that programming requires. And it's not as if some people have what it takes and others don't. We are born with a whole brain and we get to choose how to use it. --- I'm seriously left brained so I may be biased, but I don't think you have to use both sides to be a good programmer. You need both sides to be an good project manager. Good PM's are very hard to find, that's why they are so well paid, and I don't disagree with that. A good PM is gold. However, the whole Fusebox hybrid pm/programmer model they are pushing seems a little unrealistic. I'm not going to implement Fusebox without being given it as a requirement...by a PM, or client. That's just my left brain way of thinking, I think my personal methodology is better (probably not true, but I'm still not changing... ). If the pre-existing code has a methodology, I'll stick to it, and I'm not going to change it. What's more, I think that the hybrid pm/programmer model is _not_ a good thing for the majority of programmers to try and follow. When my pm comes to me with a project, I demand requirements, not some really cool idea that a client baked up, and ran to the phone and called us about. When that happens, I just write up every possible requirement in an email and shoot it back to my pm, and we can decide what is realistic (and how much to quote) at that point, after conversations with the client. So to me, requirements are how I make the transition from idea, to code logic, and comments are how I let other people reading my code know what is going on. It's not my job as a programmer, nor should it be to decide whether this feature is a good idea or not, that would only detract from my ability to figure out the logical process to get us from point a to point b. Point's a and b cannot be decided by me, or it becomes _my_ project not the clients. Hence the right side of my brain is a detriment in relation to my job as a programmer. So my whole point is, that if I do my job, and the pm does his/her job, then my severe left brain bias is a strength, not a weakness as was implied by the article, because once I know what to do, the code is the easy part. My .02 ______________________________________________________________________ Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
