Re: Converting Ada Tasks To VxWorks Tasks?

[Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com>]

In article <xEZJ4.334$d21.35336@elnws01>,
  "Michael Hartsough" <Michael-Hartsough@mediaone.net> wrote:
h
> Won't work. Official policy is that nobody's indispensible.
> especially an Ada & Multitasking Advocate.  ;^)

A bit off topic, but I really feel like making a comment on
this point. I agree that any company should have an official
policy that no one is indispensable, and should orient the
structure of development according to this point. After all
if an indispensable person is in a fatal accident, the company
can be very seriously impacted.

This is one of the reasons at Ada Core Technologies that I have
very strongly insisted on avoiding a situation where only one
person knows some code, and no one else can touch it. There
are two approaches that help:

  1. Avoid the use of author's names on units, or anything else
     that encourages the notion of ownership. Some formal
     configuration management procedures actually encourage
     or even insist on the idea that only one person can
     control changes to a unit, but I think that's a very
     bad idea.

  2. Insist on a highly uniform coding style, so that anyone
     feels comfortable with anyone else's code.

You know you are beginning to succeed here when A writes
some chunk of code, or perhaps a whole unit, and B fixes
a bug in it, and A's reaction is "great, that's one bug
I don't have to fix", instead of "Hey! What's B doing
mucking in *my* code?" I have been in far too many situations
at other companies where the second reaction is typical, and
where individuals have idiosyncratic coding styles that tend
to discourage the situation in the first place.

That being said, I find it extraordinary, and extremely
misguided that for many large companies, the policy of
avoiding indispensibility gets transmogrified to a viewpoint
that everyone is interchangable, and that, for example, if
you want to cut your work force, it doesn't matter who goes.

The fact remains that productivities vary hugely in our field,
and management failing to note this fact when they decide who
to retain is a very serious problem in companies that make
this fundamental mistake.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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