Open Kosmaczewski

Frederick P. Brooks Jr. has written about prototypes, saying that they are not only useful but strictly fundamental pieces of the overall software process, as in many other engineering activities. He gives the example of a pilot chemical plant, prepared to process 10′000 units per day instead of the 2 million units a day that [...]

In 2006 I had the opportunity to work as a “project leader” into a small failing project. Three developers were working in an ad hoc basis, creating a software application for an important client (a government office in Lausanne), without any kind of detailed formal specification, without any kind of design documentation, and with strong [...]

Published in 1975, “The Mythical Man-Month” is considered an all-time classic in the software engineering field. The book author, Frederick P. Brooks Jr., used his experience as the project manager of the IBM System/360 and its software, the Operating System/360, to explain a common set of problem patterns, applicable to other software projects as well.
One [...]

While several other professions have a long, established and standard procedure of certification, the title “software engineer” is applied to both self-made developers, turned into experts of some technique, or to people with PhD degrees, and a long history of both academic and professional achievements.
When in some situations it is not legally possible to use [...]

Many companies, at some point of their history, ask themselves a simple question: what programming language should I use? The answer to this question is tricky, and has big, big consequences, for every single line of code of your future products will be written, read and suffered by it. This single choice defines the level [...]

Interaction08: IxD’s in Savannah; Alan Cooper:
Programmers are draftsmen. However, they are different than pre-industrial workers. They are self-directed and know better than managers what to do. They respect intelligence, not authority. You can’t tell them what to do, you can only coerce them. Their satisfaction comes from the quality of their work. Unlike pre-industrial craftsmen, [...]

Reg describes 99% of all available programming jobs with incredible sincerity:
You do a clerk’s job, you settle for a clerk’s working conditions and wages, but you take solace in the thought that you are somehow more than a clerk, because you have a university degree and the dental technician who cleans your teeth doesn’t.
Only everyone [...]

Introduction
Total Quality Management is one of the founding pillars of modern mass-production economy, of which the software industry is by far the youngest (and most rebel) child. This article will provide a short discussion on some TQM principles and about their applicability to software projects.

By Diomidis Spinellis:
I have friends working at large IT companies who have to wait months to get a commit window to apply their fixes to code they maintain. No matter what problems one thinks that open-source processes have, agility is not one of them.

J’ai poste le commentaire suivant dans un article paru aujourd’hui sur Profession-Web:
“On n’est là pour lui, car C’EST LUI QUI ENGAGE.”
Je pense que l’état d’esprit de la phrase ci-dessus explique le turnover élevé et le bas rendement en général de l’industrie du software et du web en Suisse (particulièrement dans le consulting). Je ne suis [...]