Re: Programmers resistance to easier programming languages?

Re: Programmers resistance to easier programming languages?

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Catarina Jonneryd" <jonneryd@telia.com> wrote:

There was an antique (1970's) Federal Government document called
"Organizational Preparedness for Change" that might prove useful.  It
may even have been a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards)
document, at least it sat on my shelves among my collection of FIPS
docs back then.

> I'm writing a MSc thesis about things that ought to be considered when
> scripting is offered in system development environments.

Been there, seen the problems for 41 years now.  For a profession full
of people who have to steep themselves in change simply to survive,
programmers are about as inflexible as it is possible to be.

> Does anybody know of research done on resistance that experienced
> programmers might have towards simpler form of programming?

Study up on the debacle the military enjoyed when Ada, a programming
language better designed for military programming purposes than the
dozen or so incompatible existing ones in use by their staff and
contractors, was attempted to be imposed from above to replace all those
languages.  Let's just say the military blinked before the programmers
did.

You might also browse the Carneige(sp?) Mellon University's Software
Engineering Institute's work on software development capability maturity
models, especially their papers on how hard it is to get their methods
accepted.  A recent one was entitled "why aren't they practicing what we
preach?" if I recall correctly.

> Can anybody point towards literature in some other domain, than programming,
> about expert knowledge getting in the way of learning simpler ways of doing
> things?

_Future Shock_ ring a bell?

xanthian.

Speaking as someone who put off (in a snit at the clumsy way it was
first released) learning Perl for six years, and deeply regrets every
minute spent having to do stuff without it, but also as someone who's
learned nearly a gross of programming languages over four decades.

Trying to introduce Easytrieve into a shop of diehard COBOL programmers
(200 of them) at a shipyard is another tale of woe I could share.


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