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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2afac1a4161c7f35 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: who owns the code? was Re: Distinguishing type names from other identifiers Date: 1998/01/21 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 318031592 References: <884736089.2104295427@dejanews.com> <69lael$90o@top.mitre.org> <01bd2207$18f3fac0$95fc82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> <69nt40$q7n@top.mitre.org> <69rnvv$gjr@drn.zippo.com> <69t6fe$brl@drn.zippo.com> <6a00v3$ald@drn.zippo.com> <34C54EE3.C596CD72@mhv.net> X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nyu.edu X-Trace: news.nyu.edu 885398625 12449 (None) 128.122.140.58 Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-01-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Paul says I can tell you from experience that an engineer needs to have a circuit (HW engineer) or a piece of code (SW engineer) that he/she feels that was created (and maintained) by them in order to feel a sense of satisfaction in their contribution to the project. I think that code reviews by piers (i.e. inspections) are a good balance between communal development of code and private ownership. Careful here, you are just saying that in YOUR experience, YOU need to have this feeling, but you are quite wrong to project this on all others. So, if we take "an engineer" to mean you personally (and those who feel as you do), fine, but not everyone needs or appreciates this personal ownership. People need to feel a sense of pride in the goods and services they produce in order for them to produce those goods and services to the best of their ability This directly translates into quality. Absolutely! But this can be a group sense of pride, and in my experience the team spirit that comes from this is tremendously valuable. I think you will find that people who have worked in this kind of cooperative environment have found it very rewarding and productive. After all, imagine if a sports team were entirely populated by people only interested in what *they* could accomplish, as opposed to what the *team* working together could accomplish. One obvious disadvantage of the ownership model is that it makes it hard to transfer things around. If you feel you own a piece of the system, then you are not going to be happy turning it over to someone else, even if such a transfer of responsbilities makes good sense from a team point of view. I realize that many, perhaps most, engineers reading this list simply don't have the experience of working as part of a unified team. Too bad!