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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-11 10:07:16 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? Date: 11 Sep 2003 10:07:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <3F5CF12A.6060608@attbi.com> <3F5F76EC.8020807@attbi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.152.82.12 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1063300035 1041 127.0.0.1 (11 Sep 2003 17:07:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Sep 2003 17:07:15 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:42384 Date: 2003-09-11T17:07:15+00:00 List-Id: Robert I. Eachus wrote: > I worked on one project where we had a very eclectic > group, one person from Nigeria, one from China, a third from England, > and a fourth was from Russia. The rest of the team was from America. > We all had problems with the Russian that had nothing to do with his > background AFAIK. > > We has rules for checking in software, and he would on a fairly regular > basis run the full regression suite on some revision he made, and find a > bug. He would then fix the bug and check the software in without > re-running the regression suite. > > This was a serious problem, especially once we had real users for the > compiler we were creating. Fortunately the RCS would allow us to back > out his changes when the bug fix didn't work or created new problems. > The problem was not that he made mistakes, we all did. But that > particular repeated mistake on several occasions led to other team > members bypassing the RCS and using a "known good" version of the > semantic analysis code. It was not me! -:) Just because I never been in America and never participated in construction of a compiler. -;) And after all, I usually do not make the same procedural mistake more then twice, one repetition usually is enough for me, after it the mistake typically is recognized, analyzed, generalized and eliminated or suppressed -;) . Seriously, I am absolutely not surprised with that you story, and with the behaviour of the Russian character in it - I saw similar patterns very many times in former Soviet Union, and I certainly was myself subjected to many such things until recently. Now, after acquiring some experience of working with Americans, I'm much more careful about the procedural aspects of joint work... not because I believe in their importance *for my part of work*, but just for not annoying my partner or customer. Well, a culture, and in particular, software culture, reflects the real circumstances. You will not invest your efforts in building and maintenance of an infrastructure and working procedures if all that may and will be easily destroyed by overwhelming and wild external forces at any moment. And what is even worse, those things easily may be taken from you and went under hostile control. So, in generally unprotected and sometimes even hostile enviroment many good and skilled people (who were raised in that environment) naturally use only minimal infrastructure and minimize formal procedures... and sometimes even add random elements to their "procedural behaviour". And that strategy proves itself one of the best *in that enviroment* - it protects the work by making real progress almost invisible until the results become too solid and significant and therefore it is too late for attempts to harm or stop the project. (Another good strategy, which was possible occasionally, was "lightning"; with this strategy you simply make all the work in very short period of time, say, one month instead of 6 months or a year... but it worked only if the results were badly needed by high management of the enterprise.) But all above mostly sank in the past (rather quickly, during recent decade). The Western software engineering *popular* methods, procedures and working environment become widely known in Russia, and many people here acquired some experience with all that. Moreover the general working environment changes radically, and it does not reproduce anymore a negligence for working infrastructure and working procedures... partly because many companies here are owned (at least partially) by Westerners (or are divisions of American or Europian companies), partly because new generation of native managers everywhere here tries to imitate Western practices. Needless to say, all that is still acquired and not native culture. So, the formalities and tools came first, while the essence largely still did not arrive here... and those procedural issues are, perhaps, still more like a fashionable and required game then a way of life. But nevertheless, a significant part of a cultural adaptation is already done here. Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia