Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru>]

Robert I. Eachus wrote:

> If you have a guild, and in this country, the AMA 
> for physicians is exactly that, it has a great deal of power.

I'm not sure that it is true for any guild. Physicians always and everywhere
in history enjoyed a significant power (for obvious reasons), so for them a
guild is just a particular way to organize that power, not to acquire it.
The same is true for lawyers. And this is not true for software engineers so
far,

>  But the 
> philosophy and organization of a guild determines what that power is, 
> and how it is used.

Certainly. But where is that philosophy? - is it formulated and presented in
books, or it is just in minds, perhaps being incomplete and/or inconsistent,
and with unknown number of significant disagreements between different authorities?
Is *software* engineering mature enough to be a subject of consistent philosophy
- not for an indvidual or a small group, but for a guild consisting of many
thousands?

Both physicians and lawyers have history of thousands years - they had enough
time, they went through enormous amount of errors, they had great philosophers
among them. You may say that engineers have all that also - well, perhaps
(although I can't remember philosophers of comparable rank among engineers),
but not *software* engineers. Do you think that this attribute - "software"
isn't too significant?

One little example of a question of that philosophical kind: what is the
general purpose of software engineering - to build (parts of) useful material
things in a form of software, or it is to build software in engineering way,
giving it all good characteristics of a properly engineered thing?
(I suspect that at least one man, quite famous in Ada world, can't be considered
as software engineer if we use the first definition, but he certainly is a
software engineer if we accept the second one).

> We can argue fine lines about whether a guild is a better professional 
> approach for software engineering or not.  I think it is.

Being an outsider for software engineering world, I can't see all aspects
and can't weight them. I see probable harm, but perhaps I underestimate
possible advantages (or can't see them, being an outsider). Possibly you are
right... I just wonder, why the corresponding division of IEEE failed to move
in this direction, if it is so attractive.

>  I think that 
> for programmers, the engineering model of educational programs and a 
> professional society might be better when programming becomes a 
> profession.  But for programmers, that is nowhere near to happening.

Thanks God. Programming surely *is* a profession - there are (and always been)
many professions, where most of workforce is temporary or "guest", that is,
people aren't locked with this profession for life, And programmers do not
need more influence of engineering approach that they already have... current
level of that influence is just fine. More will be worse, and less will be worse.




Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia