Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: wenet.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to wenet.net.

Comments · 3

  1. Liability vs Reliability by Baldrson · · Score: 2 · on Why Most Software Sucks
    Reliability starts with liability.

    Back in the mid '70s, when I was at CERL, Sherwin Gooch came up to me on the verge of panic. He said something to the effect "We're dead. Software engineering is no longer a profession!"

    What rattled his cage was a court case in which the defendant, a software engineer, was held immune to the claims damage by his client. In the opinion, the judge in the case held that software engineering was not an engineering profession in the same class as civil engineers, and that therefore the programmer could not be held liable for damages resulting from his software.

    Sherwin was right. It has taken decades for the demand for highly skilled programmers to rebound from the lows they experienced in the late '70s when I was doing systems programming at Control Data Corporation's side of the PLATO project for about $20K/year.

  2. And across the bay in Berkeley... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Old Boxen and Charitiable Organizations

    ...there's a group called Berkeley Neighborhood Computers. They're a nonprofit organization which repairs donated systems and gives them to schools. They also loan them out to low-income families. Generally, they put the New Deal OS on the family systems (386s at least, often 486s), which are intended to be useful mainly for 1) learning some computer basics, and 2) being useful for schoolwork, and other productivity-type work. The schools tend to get the higher end donated systems, often with whatever OS was on them originally, for more general-purpose use, and for internet access.

    Incidentally, groups like this need people to repair computers (obviously), but they also need people who can troubleshoot for schools or families when they have questions, and also people to help with office work.

  3. Looks good to me... Hooo boy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Feature:Distortions

    I hate to disagree with you, but manuals and source code are meant as an aid to get computers functioning, not to be a vehicle for communicating ideas betweens humans.

    As far as this guy goes, tortured prose and a paucity of ideas does not effective communication make.

    Rather than just cast a negative vote against this guy, I want to cast a POSITIVE VOTE for somebody like Thomas Scoville, who writes lucid, concise prose. Why doesn't the /. community try to get somebody GOOD like this? Are we stuck with only people who'll work for free?

    Thanks for your time and attention.
    GSherman