> You'll be happy to know that I have steadfastly refused every
> attempt to make me into any of those. I'd rather leave the
> field entirely and flip burgers at McDonalds than be the kind
> of useless leech that 99% of managers et.al. represent.
As a consultant, I deal with a lot of managers. A good manager is
worth his weight in gold! Your ratios are off by quite a bit. There are a
lot of fairly good managers, and a lot of incompetent managers. But good
or bad, someone needs to track things and make sure the infrastructure is
not abused or missing.
> That "strange set of prejudices" is nothing of the sort, by the way:
> it's a generalization that's the result of watching B-arkers with no
> real skills (but plenty of ability to lie, act unethically, kiss ass,
> hype vaporware, run companies into the ground and collect golden
> parachutes, waste resources, and other dubious talents) in action for
> many years.
There are those, to be sure. But there are also very decent managers,
and they are needed.
> > that automates a chunk of their business and saves them $100,000/year,
> > and they're stupid to think of that as an investment?
>
> Yes, there are. Writing and deploying is a darn good idea: I agree
> with that part. But it is *not* an investment.
It is an investment of money, men, materials, and office resources to
produce something which returns something to the organization.
>
> I agree with you that junk software is a problem. And I'm not advocating
> that it be written -- I've been on death-march projects and it was
> like watching a slow-motion train wreck. (By the way, it wasn't
> the programmers' ideas to make it a death march: it was the managers
> and the bean-counters.)
I love death marches! Most of the time, I out think the problems, and
help turn the impossible into the possible. Not always... but most of the
times.
> Trying to build software with a monument-for-the-ages mindset leads
> to the development of systems that are very hard to upgrade/replace
> when the time comes -- and it WILL come.
I would tend to agree... tend...
> If you don't like the term "thrown away" then try it this way:
>
> Design them so that their components can be continually
> replaced and upgraded.
Yes.
>
> That's the rule of thumb for dead languages like your little pet
> failure, Ada. It's quite easy to write programs in C, C++, Perl,
> or Java that run on just about every 'nix system in existence with
> almost no additional effort, and -- if you must -- on NT and openVMS.
Porting from UNIX to UNIX isn't that much of a port. To NT, Windows,
AS400... mainframes, that IS a port.
> I doubt it. The only reason bean-counters count beans and
> managers manage is that they don't have the intelligence
> or the skills to do real work. I have far more respect for
> whoever cleans the toilets at IBM/etc. headquarters -- who is *at least*
> making an honest living through hard work -- than I do for the CEO.
You should try running a company or two then. Your own, so no one
else gets hurt. It is NOT easy!
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