Re: Do we need "Mission-Critical" software? Was: What to Do?

[sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de (Georg Bauhaus)]

Jerry Petrey (jdpetrey@west.raytheon.com) wrote:

:   In software today it seems like people just
: want to 
: get into it fast, learn the latest 'in' language and start making
: money.  Perhaps
: that is why there is so much bad software out there.

Yes, and what is the solution?
If those who hire people for writing programs were a bit
more knowledgeable wrt programming, or at least knew someone
who is, at least the small and very small software projects
might look different.

I.e. management must learn what programming is or consult
someone about it. That starts at the university level, there
not in the unpopular math oriented courses, but those on
economy givven by teachers they like. Don't
all the teachers here know this?
  In an area that Ada programmers might not
want to call real programming, i.e. in the overabundance of
"set up an interactive website" area, projects seem to be slowly
drifting from script fiddling to more carefully planned
applications, at least this is what I hear and see every now
and then.
Surprise after surprise about the time and memory constraints of
some interpreted languages and those of transaction based
DBMSs... 

there is a certain level of detail to be mastered when
you want to use a language like Ada, chapters 1 and 2 in
Norman Cohens book illustrate this. The people whom Jerry
characterized won't stand this without further sweets
(hipness, prestige, fun reading, fun listening, money, ...)
when they just want to get the job done (an idiom stressed
in this nwes group). So where are the sweets for the
not-so-mathematically oriented?

Much as you won't stand the devisability intro to number
theory and analysing gcd when you just want some
calculatoion to be fast _unless_ you have reason to
be interested.  Fill in reasons for having reason :-)