Carl, >Even in the olden days coding was only about 10 percent of total effort.
But it's 90% of the fun and I don't see how any theory of programming can be taken seriously unless personal enjoyment is taken into account. >So if the goal is better quality software, then the better psychological question >to study is why programmers reject proven formal techniques and continue their >brute force and awkwardness ways believing they can intellectually overcome It all depends on how you measure "better quality software". If this is measured in terms of shareholder value (of the company who wrote the software) then a better psychological question would be why do people continue to promote formal techniques when they have been shown to increase costs (you need to take into account the higher startup costs of projects that are cancelled, this figure is higher than the cost savings later on those projects that are not cancelled)? How do we know that the techniques being used today are not the best ones? I remember seeing a report on the year 2000 problem that calculated the best way of dealing with the problem (ie, cheapest). Ignore it for as long as possible came out as the winner (which is exactly what most companies did). The cost of addressing the issue in programs that would not be used after the year 2000 being the most significant factor. The best way of finding out which programs were not needed after 2000 being to wait and see. Without statistically significant empirical studies all this theorising is pointless. derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
