From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,899fc98b2883af4a X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-15 07:00:29 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Quality systems (Was: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died)) Date: 15 May 2003 07:00:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <9fa75d42.0305150600.72feef7f@posting.google.com> References: <9fa75d42.0304230424.10612b1a@posting.google.com> <17cd177c.0305072114.24f04783@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305090612.261d5a5c@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305091549.48b9c5d9@posting.google.com> <7507f79d.0305121629.5b8b7369@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305130543.60381450@posting.google.com> <5mmwa.65$dp4.60@read3.inet.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: 32.97.239.19 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1053007228 17672 127.0.0.1 (15 May 2003 14:00:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 May 2003 14:00:28 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63841 comp.object:63454 comp.lang.ada:37345 misc.misc:14197 comp.software-eng:19199 Date: 2003-05-15T14:00:28+00:00 List-Id: "Anders Wirzenius" wrote in message news:<5mmwa.65$dp4.60@read3.inet.fi>... > He had a lucky time since the programers were loyal to him. I wonder how Mr Spolsky had reacted if the programmers had ignored his > pages and programmed the macro handling based on their own knowledge of macro language strategy? Had he intervened in their work or > just trusted them and let them do their job? Well, that's where the trust comes from. The basic idea is that you assume your programmers are smart, conscientious workers. If you go with that idea, then the only reason programmers would ignore his pages is if he was a very dumb person, hired accidentally, and had no clue what he was designing. In which case, perhaps ignoring his pages would have been the right thing to do. "Consensus building" does require support from hierarchy. But the primary motivation is "does this makes sense", rather than "what is the opinion of the highest person in the hierarchy who is involved". > If you stretch the Microsoft story to its extreme, you may perhaps ask what the benefits of having levels in an organization are? > Why not just come together, set up a company, and have all persons owning their area with no possibility for the co-workers to have > an influence? If you get bad quality, just fire the person and hire another expert (and hope for the best:-). But who has then the > mandate to fire? > I guess in the Microsoft story, the job of the mgmt hierarchy is to make sure good programmers are hired, are happy, have their jobs well-defined, and can do it without interference. In the the Juno story, the job of the mgmt is the same as the job of the programmers, but the lower a person is in the hierarchy, the more "low level" stuff he/she does. In earlier incarnations of Juno-style thinking, the lowest level is supposed to just code stuff from pseudo-code. The next higher level writes pseudo-code. The next higher level is deemed adequate to understand algorithms... > The real world lies of course somewhere between these. You need "management" to some degree and therefore I stick to what I wrote in > a previous post: "Error catching as early as possible is a good co-worker to both the programmer and his superior". > Compilers that reveal programming errors or issue warnings are a good thing to both me and my superior. But if you are managing, this should be an issue for your programmers to decide by consensus and not for you. (Of course, it is a management issue if you are subcontracting to some DoD or Boeing thing and getting the contract depends upon Ada. In that case, you have to explain nicely to your programmers "I know Ada is slow and frustrating to work with, but it's not really our choice, and you all are good folks, so I know you will get things done anyway.")