Most of the discussion seems to focus on the coding aspects of programming, e.g., whether you use this construct or that construct, the kind of things the CodeSmells Web site focuses on.
Most models of software development, as backed up by my own personal experience, indicte that requirements/specification work, not coding, is the dominant programming actvity. Coding only accounts for at most 25% of development time. People who are really good at writing clear, well structured code are about the least valuable members of a programming team. They're the ones we hire as contractors and let go as soon as the coding phase is over. A good testor is worth three or four of a good coder. Why do we have such a low opinion of coders? Well, we've discovered that, left to themselves, they'll write beautiful code that doesn't do anything useful. They'll be such Linux fanatics that they'll do an application in Linux, even though none of the end users use Linux. After all, Linux is the superior coding environment, isn't it? After wasting two years, we just did a major re-direction of a project that was so enamoured of the .NET architecture that they never figured out what their product did. The people we hang on to even when times are tough are the ones who can design useful applications that are feasible to develop. Such people do know a great deal about coding; otherwise, they couldn't design things that were feasible to implement. More important, though, they understand application requirements and can translate these into software architectures. If I could determine the direction of software psychology research, it would be to study this software design process. Unfortunately, it's not easy to study. It's pretty easy to write several programs that solve the same problem; it's much harder to come up with several problems that are different in content yet equivalent in complexity. Still, as long as the requirements gathering and design process dominates software development, any knowledge that can be gathered in this area is immensely valuable. Ruven Brooks - Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
