On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Michael Arnoldus <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank you for this Robert. > > I find it frustrating how people within computer science argue for the most > important area being increasing programmer productivity only to shortly > after start discussing subjects where the person doing the work is completely > left out of the equation. > Yes, it is frustrating. My current working definition of Software Engineering is 'Computer Science with the people back "in"' while the slogan for our research is 'Putting the Engineer back in Software Engineering' ;). I think that focusing on and understanding the humans in concert with the technology might be more productive than focusing purely on technology, on process or specific development methods.
> I suppose it's bounded in the (mis)understanding that "true science" should > look somewhat like physics and/or mathematics. > Yes, I have a strong sense that the large amounts of funding going into formal approaches and "pure" CS stems from a kind of physics and math envy. I think it will be more fruitful to see it as an applied and multidisciplinary mix of present-day-CS, Psychology, Sociology and Economics/Business. > So it's great to see a physics quote saying that a reasonable definition of > complexity is highly subjective. I can see why it's tempting to look for > solutions where the programmer is left out - it does complicate the problem > considerably. However it reminds me of the old joke about the drunk looking > for his keys under the lamppost > (http://dushkablog.blogspot.com/2008/04/drunk-under-lamppost.html). > I think that goes to the root of it; it's conceptually cleaner to keep them separated. > (c) and (d) has the advantage that it would probably be possible to construct > experiments to test this and this gain a bit objectivity. One problem is of > course we have no "standard programmer" to do the testing with :-) > Randomization, multiple study subjects and statistical tests to the rescue... Cheers, Robert _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
