Prof Winder,
Thank you for a meaty series of observations (10/22) A couple of them
led me to do some more thinking about the "blended-user programmer"
concept.
(you quote me:)
> > it is my contention that in many areas such as Web and GUI programming,
> > business applications, and network administration/programming, the
> > attitudes and skill sets of professionals and end-users are becoming
> > blended. I've even coined a phrase, "blended-user programmers." They
> > do real programming by most of your definitions, but in their
> > exploratory learning style and taking things at interface value in
> > sophisticated tools, they share many characteristics of end users. They
> > may even have a large non-programming element of their job, like graphic
> > design or setting up people's computers. I think this combination is a
> > new piece of the puzzle: a full understanding of the activity of
> > programming has to include all 3 types of professionals.
>
> I can give only anecdotal evidence but the answer to me is no. Systems
> development professionals and end users have overlapping concerns but
> the bulk of their attitudes and skill sets are massively different.
> This is true even in those individuals who are both domain pracitioners
> (aka end users) and systems development experts.
(and just before this, referring to end-user programmers):
>
> People who were domain experts rarely turn out to be good professional
> programmers without proper formal training. There are a large number of
> people out their claiming to be professional Access programmers who
> don't even know what third normal form is let alone fifth normal form.
>
As a teenager I worked at my father's business, a license examination
preparation school for building contractors among others. This
experience suggested an analogy: your Access programmers are not
Computer Scientists or even Software Engineers; they are high-tech
tradesmen. A contractor who follows building codes and uses standard
design methods can build houses that won't fall down, even though he has
never studied materials science, and couldn't integrate the forces on a
beam to save his life. You wouldn't trust him to design a 50-story
office building, but to add a recreation room over your garage, he is
your man.
There is as you say a large (and rapidly increasing) number of people
who are paid to develop programs -- they are not end users who program
in addition to their other duties -- in tools like Access who are not
formally trained. Like building tradesmen, they do economically-useful
work despite lacking apparently essential theoretical knowledge. A
large part of their "building code" is embedded in the
intricately-engineered tools they use. The rest is conveyed by
certificate courses and preparation books whose "cookbook" tone and
step-by-step approach is quite reminiscent for me of those courses for
contractors.
Most of humanity are concrete thinkers. That's OK, because most of the
world's work is concrete. "Put the staircase here." "Move the wafer
into the chamber, pump it to .5 Torr, and start the plasma treatment."
"Add these sales, multiply by that percentage, and order more parts if
the total exceeds that level." Progress and cutting-edge work in
software as in other fields requires science and engineering. Yet there
is a great deal of unpretentious work in software that just meets human
needs and wants. Those normalization-challenged Access programmers may
never process the human genome, but some human beings somewhere like
their work and pay them for it. Such programmers are a significant and
increasing part of the programming world. Like end-user programmers, we
need to study their limitations and usefulness, and see how to help them
and make the best use of them.
(BTW a CHI 99 workshop on this subject was recently approved; a major
activity there should be coming up with such a research agenda.)
Take care!
Howie Goodell
--
************************************************************************
Howie Goodell Senior Software Engineer HCI Research Group
28 Lucille Avenue Micrion Corporation Computer Science Dept
Salem, NH 1 Corp Wy Centennial Park Univ. of Mass. Lowell
03079-2054 Peabody, MA 01960-7990 1 University Avenue
(603) 898-8407 (978) 538-6680 Lowell, MA 01854
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
End-User Programming: http://www.cs.uml.edu/~hgoodell/EndUser
