[Tfug] OT - WAS Re: Cyber War -oh noes | Now H1B Visa Rant

[keith smith]

We do re-grind a lot of the same stuff.  I came in during the early DOS years so my frame of reference is 

1) DOS: Doing everything by hand
2) WINDOWS: Rapid Application Development - drag and drop widgets - resistance because there is "so much code" and it is not efficient.
3) WEB 1.0 & 2.0: Doing everything by hand, some emergence of RAD tools such as Delphi for PHP and the same resistance to these tools like FrontPage that make less than perfect code but save tons of effort and more importantly time.

Maybe we will see another platform once we figure out how to develop proficiently for the web, and we will be back to coding by hand.

Of course we have only scratched the surface of what is going to happen on the web.  I predict the web will become a very interactive game like environment that will require tons of resources to launch the future equivalent of today's website.

And how do you define a good programmer?  Someone that can create efficient code fast but cannot communicate effectively?  Or someone who is really good at seeing the vision and applying it but creates adequate code and is a little slower?  Assuming there is this one extreme or the other extreme type of programmer.

Or is there some model that needs to be in place that has many layers.  A layer that deals with the customer.  This layer is good at communicating with the customer and gathering information and documenting the requirements. What I think some books might refer to as an Analyst.  A "manager" or lead that can take the requirements and be the conduit between the "analysts" and the programmers.  

With this special person ("manager" or lead) now in place he or she will have the skills necessary to direct and motivate this extreme class of ultra exceptional programmer  through the project.

Or is there some other model?

This is a point of interest to me because I have hired people to help me in the past and my selections were not close to what I needed.  I thought with the second person I did a fair amount of do diligence however He was not a match from the get go.

I am looking at possibly hiring one or two people to help me late spring / early summer.

I would like to be much more proficient the next go around. 



------------------------
Keith Smith




--- On Sat, 1/10/09, Jim Secan <jim at nwra.com> wrote:
From: Jim Secan <jim at nwra.com>
Subject: Re: [Tfug] OT - WAS Re: Cyber War -oh noes | Now H1B Visa Rant
To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
Date: Saturday, January 10, 2009, 2:40 PM

Not being up on the latest "buzz" I wasn't sure what SOA is, so I
wiki'd
it.  Sounds like Same Old Anarchy to me.  A "standard" that is so
fragmented by vendors that it might as well not exist.

The core ideas, when you dig down through the technobabble, are back to
things that have been around for decades - code resuse, scope control,
network agents, ad nauseum.  I don't know why programmers should be
terrified of this, it's one more thing to learn, and charge your stupified
bosses to have you learn, and then move on to the Next Hot Thing (Web
3.0?) when that shows up.  Never-ending employment.

Sounds to me like more attempts to get around the problem that there is
more software needed than there are competent and talented programmers to
handle.  At least at slave wages.  Business won't acknowledge the fact
that not everyone can program, and a good programmer is worth his/her
weight in Doritos and Jolt.  Heck, universities can't even figure that one
out.  This seems like more attempts to make a simple problem more obscure
so no one is surprised when failure comes out the back end.

Or am I just getting testy in my old age?

Jim
cara wrote:
> Here's something that I've been noticing which is related to this
thread
> (I
> think). My computer science career has led me to the study of
> Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). On two of my jobs so far,
> programmers
> have been super threatened by any talk of SOA. "Oh my god, you
> autogenerate
> code?!" Programmers assume it's another big threat to their jobs.
But, it
> is
> pretty obvious that these SOA projects need people with business smarts
> and
> if the people have technical skills, well, that's an added bonus.
I'm
> still
> mystified why so many programmers are threatened by the increasing amount
> of
> autogenerated code for client-server components ... components using axis
> projects, xerces, castor, embedded xdoclet ... whatever. In my opinion,
> getting the plumbing in place, could help you focus on the fine-grained
> problems.
>
> Along with communication being more important at times than technical
> skills, solving business problems seems more important than too much worry
> about shipping the techical app work to India. I would hope that American
> programmers, esp. those who grow and learn beyond just programming, will
> always have good jobs available. Yeah, our entire economy looks like a
> giant
> ponzi scheme ... maybe we will start making useful things and actually
> have
> some business problems to solve in 2009, eh?
>
> cara


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