Re: chief programmer team organizations was (c++ vs ada results)

[rmartin@clear.com (Bob Martin)]

In article <25587@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes:
>
>     Real chief programmer teams are very rare.  I've never heard of one
>other than in Brooks' book.  It's very different than having a lead programmer
>or a system architect.  It's organized like a surgical team.  The chief
>programmer personally writes most of the delivered code, and everything else
>is set up to facilitate this.  There is an administrator, who reports to the
>chief programmer, to take care of mundane problems.  A toolsmith creates
>tools not part of the deliverable code.  A language lawyer deals with
>compiler and library issues.  A tester tests everything.  A librarian 
>keeps track of everything.  All these people are subordinate to the chief
>programmer.
>
>    It's too much of a culture shock for most organization.
>
>					John Nagle
>    

Not to mention that it is impractical for one programmer to write the bulk
of the code required for today`s applications. 

One of the major problems in developing large projects is making sure that
everyone working on the project has the same 'vision' of what they are
building, and how they are going to build it.  This 'vision' spans concerns
which are as diverse as high-level architecture to coding standards to 
testing methodologies.  Providing this vision ought to be the job of 
the architect or a small group of architects.


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