From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)
Subject: Re: who owns the code? was Re: Distinguishing type names from other identifiers
Date: 1998/01/23
Date: 1998-01-23T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6a9s5f$2p1$1@news.nyu.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 6a8mir$caa@nn <dewar.8855 <6a8vgd$cr7@nntp1.erinet.com
In article <6a8vgd$cr7@nntp1.erinet.com> jhopper@erinet.com (James Hopper) writes:
>I think this is the crux of my difference with you robert. I would
>probably agree that a team is composed of smaller subgroups who
>specialize (as oposed to own) an area of the problem domain. Your
>description up to now kind of gave me the impression that you were
>advocating anyone could at any time work on anything, if no one owns it
>than no one controls it i guess is my thinking.
The key here is *could*: "could work on anything". That does not mean
that, in practice, people in fact *do* work on anything. I'm probably
the most specificialized person in the GNAT team: I work on GCC and
the interface between the GNAT front end and GCC (Gigi). I don't know
the front end (or even the Ada language) very well.
Many bugs initially go to me, since it's Gigi that complains about
errors in the tree generated by the front end. My normal procedure is
to "interpret" the complaint and let people more familiar with the
front end fix it. But once in a while if it looks like a simple fix
and I feel comfortable doing it, I'll fix the bug in the front end.
As another example, we recently added a new validity test in Gigi and
found that a large number of our regression tests produced trees that
were now "invalid". These all represented bugs in the front end, but
since I was, at that moment, one of the people most familiar with the
issue, I fixed these myself, even though it meant a couple of dozen
changes in front end files, which I don't normally touch.
The point is that, in doing these things, I didn't need anybody's
"permission" or have to be at all concerned that somebody would be at
all upset that I did these things. In each case, everybody was
pleased they didn't have to do this.
All that was required was for me to feel that I had sufficient comfort
with the code I changed to do so cleanly, and that all the regression
tests passed.
As Robert said, this sort of thing wont't work for everybody, but the
main skill needed is the experience to know what you and don't know.
This, however, is a nearly essential skill in technical work anyway,
for both managers and engineers.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-01-23 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-01-13 0:00 Distinguishing type names from other identifiers Adam Beneschan
1998-01-14 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-01-15 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
1998-01-15 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-01-17 0:00 ` nabbasi
1998-01-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-18 0:00 ` who owns the code? was " nabbasi
1998-01-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-19 0:00 ` nabbasi
1998-01-19 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Paul Van Bellinghen
1998-01-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-21 0:00 ` nabbasi
1998-01-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-21 0:00 ` nabbasi
1998-01-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-22 0:00 ` nabbasi
1998-01-26 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Anonymous
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
[not found] ` <69rnvv$ <dewar.885475174@me>
[not found] ` <6a8mir$caa@nn <dewar.8855 <6a8vgd$cr7@nntp1.erinet.com>
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Paul Van Bellinghen
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Richard Kenner [this message]
1998-01-23 0:00 ` James Hopper
1998-01-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-23 0:00 ` James Hopper
[not found] ` <6a8mir$caa@nn <dewar.8855 <6a8vgd$cr7@nn <dewar.885555487@merv>
1998-01-24 0:00 ` James Hopper
1998-01-21 0:00 ` Philip Brashear
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Benoit Jauvin-Girard
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-19 0:00 ` who owns the code? was " Anonymous
1998-01-19 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1998-01-22 0:00 Marc Wachowitz
[not found] <En96zv.9LA@world.std.com>
1998-02-03 0:00 ` TConiam
1998-02-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
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