Computer Science

[Jim Garrison]

On 10/17/2024 10:06, matthew patton via Cygwin wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 11:07:50 PM EDT, Mike Yearwood via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
> 
>> The education of and practice of software is glaringly lax and we have the
>> collective power to fix it.
> 
> ahem, Microsoft would like to enter the chat...
> Apparently "unlimited" funds doesn't help either.
> 
> I'm gonna go with this is an unfixable problem. The quality of the workers is for the most part so bad, you can't manager your way to a solution.
> Unfortunately, modern life requires way more code than the handful of actually good programmers can hope to address.
> 

Having been a developer since the early 70s I agree, the problem is 
unfixable without a major breakthrough in understanding what makes a 
good developer.

I have an analogy.  Coding is like playing the recorder (fipple-flute, 
"English flute", etc). Any 6-year-old can learn the fingerings well 
enough to carry a tune, but drive to insanity anybody within earshot. 
Learning to code is about as difficult.  In both cases, the gap between 
knowing the fingerings and playing professionally is tens of thousands 
of hours of study and practice.

Most university courses in "software engineering" don't begin to cover 
the actual knowledge base and, more importantly, internal mental 
processes, discipline and curiosity required to do quality software 
development.  I've had to work with "software engineering" PhDs who have 
no clue.

The reason? I don't think anybody actually knows how to teach "software 
engineering", or reliably identify good software engineers.  Seeing the 
abysmal, bug-ridden state of the software industry (Windows, Mac OS, 
iOS, etc) is plenty of evidence.

I could go on, but this is off-topic already.

-- 
Jim Garrison
jhg@acm.org