Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the diary-of-a-madman dept.
bsadler writes "There is a pretty interesting article on the psychology of a programmer over at devx. It includes some suggestions that a manager might take into account when dealing with programmers. Maybe my boss will finally give me my own office."
Re:It's not really psychology
by
Orthanc_duo
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I think the big point is that programming is an art. Every programmer I know knows this on som elevel but lay people generally do not. I'm lucky in that my boss is a programmer
Re:It's not really psychology
by
SpaceLifeForm
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not that simple. Just treating them like
people is part of the problem. Most people
can deal with interruptions because they don't
stay on the same train of thought for very long.
Non-programmer types when they interrupt a
programmer *never* for a second believe they
are really causing a problem. But, IMNSHO,
those interruptions are real thought-killers.
I'd like to LART some managers who come by
every 10 or 15 minutes while I'm working on
a project with a very tight deadline, and ask
'Is it done yet?'
-- You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Re:It's not really psychology
by
DuctTape
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'd like to LART some managers who come by every 10 or 15 minutes while I'm working on a project with a very tight deadline, and ask 'Is it done yet?'
Reminds me of one time I was a project manager "under the gun" for a past-due project deadline, and my manager and his boss and various other PHBs would come around at nondeterministic intervals to ask what the status was (essentially it was done as soon as the developers had a V-8 moment), so as an experiment, and a total waste of time on my part but the developers understood what was going on and that I was being a very effective filter between them and the PHBs, I would continuously round-robin visit the developers getting continuous status updates, and at the end of each cycle, I would pop my head into the PHBs' offices and let them know what was going on. This kept me from getting interrupted at random moments, and the guys kinda figured out when to expect me, and could give one-syllable grunts to convey status with minimal context switch.
I think my approval rating went up that period. Of course, I never did it again.
Perhaps we need an article about the psychology of PHBs. Or project managers. Still can't believe I did it....
DT
-- Is this thing on? Hello?
Please forward to our foreign compatriots...
by
rand.srand()
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Well intentioned, but the reality is programmers are being wholesale replaced with foriegn labor. Businesses, especially non-IT ones, want nothing to programming or hiring programmers. Much less cater to them in any way above other employees.
A shower?? There's a guy in the Republic of Elbonia who's willing to work out of his hovel on a old 386 for $4 a day programming. He doesn't demand breaks, and there's no coffee machine to stock. And he's viewed as a nearly identical resource. Now is not the time to demand high priced add-ons. But... if we could just get the people of Elbonia to buy into this and equalize the market...
...her?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Why do people insist on using 'her' instead of 'his' for the generic pronoun? It isn't 'sensitive', it's illiterate. Using female pronouns is even somewhat insensitive: it implies women need to be compensated for, and gratuitously inserts a gender issue into one's writing.
I've no idea how this happened, but somewhere along the line we let ourselves be talked into the idea that creativity is present in artists, musicians, and architects, but not programmers, box packers, or soccer players. Creativity is a basic human ability.
Computers can't paint. They can't write computer programs either. It's not some crude mechanistic process that we can automate ; there is a need for style and creativity. Which to me, makes it an art.
(Surely painting and music are 'explicitly constructed by man', and each of these have distinct rules that allow one to do it well too?)
Slashdot Mirror
There is no psychology really involved... Just treat the programmers as the professionals they are. Treat them like people.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Well intentioned, but the reality is programmers are being wholesale replaced with foriegn labor. Businesses, especially non-IT ones, want nothing to programming or hiring programmers. Much less cater to them in any way above other employees.
A shower?? There's a guy in the Republic of Elbonia who's willing to work out of his hovel on a old 386 for $4 a day programming. He doesn't demand breaks, and there's no coffee machine to stock. And he's viewed as a nearly identical resource. Now is not the time to demand high priced add-ons. But... if we could just get the people of Elbonia to buy into this and equalize the market...
Why do people insist on using 'her' instead of 'his' for the generic pronoun? It isn't 'sensitive', it's illiterate. Using female pronouns is even somewhat insensitive: it implies women need to be compensated for, and gratuitously inserts a gender issue into one's writing.
I've no idea how this happened, but somewhere along the line we let ourselves be talked into the idea that creativity is present in artists, musicians, and architects, but not programmers, box packers, or soccer players. Creativity is a basic human ability.
Computers can't paint. They can't write computer programs either. It's not some crude mechanistic process that we can automate ; there is a need for style and creativity. Which to me, makes it an art.
(Surely painting and music are 'explicitly constructed by man', and each of these have distinct rules that allow one to do it well too?)