From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-11 14:36:02 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn13feed!wn11feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!sccrnsc01.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F60EAB7.9030404@attbi.com> From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? References: <3F5CF12A.6060608@attbi.com> <3F5F76EC.8020807@attbi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.34.139.183 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: sccrnsc01 1063316161 24.34.139.183 (Thu, 11 Sep 2003 21:36:01 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 21:36:01 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 21:36:01 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:42390 Date: 2003-09-11T21:36:01+00:00 List-Id: Alexander Kopilovitch wrote: > It was not me! -:) Just because I never been in America and never > participated in construction of a compiler. -;) And after all, I usually > do not make the same procedural mistake more then twice, one repetition > usually is enough for me, after it the mistake typically is recognized, > analyzed, generalized and eliminated or suppressed -;) . > > Seriously, I am absolutely not surprised with that you story, and with > the behaviour of the Russian character in it - I saw similar patterns > very many times in former Soviet Union, and I certainly was myself > subjected to many such things until recently. Now, after acquiring > some experience of working with Americans, I'm much more careful about > the procedural aspects of joint work... not because I believe in their > importance *for my part of work*, but just for not annoying my partner > or customer. I know it wasn't you, but I didn't want to name the individual. And as you say, his original style of work was very typical for Russians. Not a problem--if you can adapt to the actual culture of the current project. If you can't, eventually your conflict with the project style will outweigh the contributions you can and do make. Incidently what Alexander was explaining as typical Russian style is not necessarily Russian. At MITRE we found that there was a significant change in culture among development teams when the computer resources reached one MIPS per person. Of course, that was ten years ago, today the requirement for an open culture is probably just a network connected computer on every desk. It turns out that the advantage of the RCS (revision control system) and open--everyone has access to the latest versions of everyone else's code--comes from minimizing the number of versions of a single module floating around. The best situation is when there is only one "checked out" version of any source file outside the RCS. This means that programmers need to share access to their working directories. That is a real culture change for many programmers, and it doesn't come easy. -- Robert I. Eachus "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." -- Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is concerned, you're right." -- Rush Limbaugh