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The Rise and Rise of IT Administrators
maffstephens writes "Have you noticed how difficult it's become to develop software? Not because software is more complex, but because there seems to be an army of administrators standing in your way - sys admins, network admins, database admins, runtime admins - the list is endless. They should be there to help us, to make our lives easier, but the reality is often very different. This thought-provoking article from Software Reality is all about the emerging culture of spiteful, dog-in-the-manger prevention amongst corporate IT administrators. Software development has become so inefficient as a result, it's no wonder so many companies are outsourcing."
We're a cancer?
I think it's more that the software development cycle is becoming move evolved, as happened to engineering a few decades ago. The days of slapping things together and getting it out the door are gone, and good thing, we all see what occurred at Microsoft when quality wasn't a top priority. Buggy software with huge security holes.
IF we want the public to trust software and computers more we have to develop a more "engineering" like mentality. Otherwise the public will think rebooting your computer three times a day is normal and acceptable.
I say this from the point of few as both a system administrator and developer. There were times in my old company I would highly object to certain courses of action because they might have compromised security. This forced the developers to go back and rethink things. However the developer side of me usually had a better suggestion anyhow.
Which brings us to the next point, part of the developer "get it out the door" mentality involves a lack of understanding by said developers of how systems work. They learn their C++ or Java in school, but they fail to learn how the underlaying OS and hardware work. IT training has become job training rather then creating computer scientists. Perhaps things would flow better if all invlved better understood the fundamentals of computers.
I for one am not said to see the development cycle slow down. Far too many times have I see bosses go, "Just get it done, we'll worry about cleaning it up later." Do you want the software controlling your car or the X-ray machine at the hospital being managed by such a manager? I certainly don't.
There are a world of difference from what the normal marketing person, executive, etc needs from a computer and what a programmer needs. Most people don't need much in the way of room to play around, and they shouldn't have that room.
Programmers are different. I write code, I need to test it. Maybe it needs root to run. You, as the sysadmin controlling my stuff, need to let me do that. In reality, there almost needs to be a different network for programmers, where they have the room that they need to mess with their code and see how it works. Sysadmins need to understand this difference. Programmers don't need root access to the network's servers, but they might need root access to a testing server, and it's the sysadmin's job to make sure that he can have a testing server running on a network.
wrong.
If the app isnt running as root, you dont need root permission to trace system calls.
Unless your OS sucks or something.