Re: software engineering and the notion of authorship

[fjh@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)]

I got a useful reply from Scott Ellsworth <fuz@deltanet.com> via email;
he said he wouldn't mind if I posted it.

> Assuming the original poster is not a doof, what I assume he means by 
> ego-less programming is simply programming for clarity, not cleverness.  
> Often, if someone's name is atattched to a product, they get possessive, 
> and try to do things in the most complex and clever way they know how.  
> This does not actually give them a better rep in most other people's 
> eyes, but inexperienced programmers often think it should.
> 
> Proper training can break someone of this, just like it can break them of 
> not commenting code that needs it, and proper code reviews can make 
> overly clever code be rewritten for clarity.  Of course, if the code is 
> time critical and needs to be faster, then clever is good.
> 
> Personally, I approve of pride of creation in most software projects, as 
> long as that includes the stated assumption that your creation will 
> become someone elses creation once you move to another project.

That reply explains to me some of the motivations behind ego-less programming
better than many of the other articles in this thread.

For the moment, I remain open-minded about whether or not recording authorship
is advantageous or disadvantageous overall.  One thing is certain, and that
is that knowing the dangers helps one to avoid them.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.