Re: Ada in command / control systems

[russ lyttle <lyttlec@removegmail.com>]

On 3/5/19 4:28 AM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On 2019-03-05 08:18, G. B. wrote:
> 
>> Managers cannot see what programmers do.
> 
> Need they to? I think the established view is that [mis]management is a 
> discipline of its own. A manager can manage a diary farm company or a 
> software house just same...
> 
I have to disagree with the last statement. If the manager isn't skilled 
in a field, he can't manage it. For example, staffing a software company 
and a dairy farm are completely different. Having done both, I suggest 
looking up Watts S.Humpherey books for some thoughts.
I once heard him say "It takes five years to go from CMM level 1 to 
level 5, and one day to go from level 5 to level 1. My personal 
experience confirms that. My MBA classes taught that the first thing a 
company should do to cut cost and increase profit is to lay off 
personnel. At the dairy farm, I could staff up and lay off pretty much 
at will. It wasn't difficult to find people to shovel up behind cows. So 
the first thing the manager of a ball team should do to increase profit 
is lay off the players. Same thing at a software company. I have some 
good horror stories about trying to staff software personnel. Staffing 
the dairy farm usually involved painting "Help Wanted" on a sheet of 
plywood by the road.

>> But if there is a presentable pictogram of a software
>> product, it creates a different idea.
>>
>> So, things to do to prove that source text is better than pictures is to
>> (a) be able to answer, from source, questions satisfactorily and (b)
>> extract, from source, a pictorial representation with which people can
>> work.
> 
> There is nothing to prove. Pictures are to convey a general idea or 
> concept. It is the best way to impress but also to fool an incompetent 
> manager, customer, buyer. But it is no way to analyze, design implement 
> things. You compare incomparable: marketing and engineering.
>