The Industry choice
Mark Carter
mcturra2000 at yahoo.co.uk
Sun Jan 2 13:46:23 EST 2005
Cameron Laird wrote:
> In article <41d7def6$0$74273$ed2619ec at ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net>,
> Mark Carter <mcturra2000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> .
> [tale of *very*
> typical experience
> with non-software
> engineers]
> .
> .
>
Don't start me! Dammit, too late ...
I've noticed that they have an overwhelming obsession with GUIs, too.
They design wizards for everything. Damn pretty they are, too. Albeit a
bit flakey. They seem to conflate pretty interfaces with good interfaces
and good software.
I used to joke that since our software wasn't particularly magical, it
didn't need wizards. But I think I just ended up sounding bitter.
We once had a bit of software that we thought we'd like to turn into a
generic application. The focus on improvements was, predictably enough,
that we should design a GUI that could do anything a client would likely
to want to do. It was my opinion, though, having seen the very
"special-cases" nature required in the original software, that it was
almost impossible to predict exactly how a customer might want the
product tailored. I suggested that what they really needed was a library
(Python would have been good for this, Lisp might have been even better)
that could be extended as required. GUIs second, functionality first.
But hey, what would I know. Fortunately, the whole thing's been put on
the back burner.
And trying to get through to them why source control makes sense, that
when more than one person works on a project, some form of coordination
is required, that copying and pasting code is evil, and that Excel
probably isn't the hammer for every nail.
Honestly, I thought (real) engineers were supposed to be clever.
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