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An Idea For Software's Industrial Revolution
An anonymous reader writes: Tech company Code Valley makes the bold claim that a software industrial revolution may be imminent (PDF). They propose shifting developers from the coding domain (current software development practice) to a "design-domain," where the emphasis is no longer on writing code, but on decentralized design – code becomes simply a by-product of this collaboration. In this design-domain, software programs are designed (and built) by a peer-to-peer supply chain of software vendors, each owned and managed by a software engineer. They envisage a global supply-chain of these software experts capable of reliably delivering immensely complex software.
Who is actually making the software, and why does it make since to divorce design from the people executing it? This is the dumbest idea since Agile was invented.
The code will just write itself!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
my bullshit meter just exploded
This kind of nonsense keeps popping up every few years. It was about time some "visionary" tried selling this crap again.
I'm sure it's different this time and there's this new thing that will solve all the problems they had the last 15 times someone has tried to push this idea...
No No No! A thousand times NO!
Software is a service sector, not manufacturing. Trying to treat it as an industrial process is incorrect and leads to poor management and dysfunction. A development team is more like builders designing constructing the factory, or tools and dies work to be used in the factory, than factory work. But even that is a dangerous analogy. It is soft process rather than a hard process in that it is mostly intangible.
Do not think of it as industrial in any sense and you will have a better grasp on things.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
First, it seems like the fundamental misunderstanding these people are making is that the code you write embodies your "specialization". Wrong. Your value is not in the code you wrote yesterday, it's in the problem solving ability in that particular domain that resides between your ears. Your value is the code you can write tomorrow.
No convoluted construct is required if you want to retain ownership of the code and just license it to whoever wants it written. Put it in the contract. If the buyer won't take it now, they won't take it with some clunky layer of nonsense on top of it, either.
Seriously, the problem with no industry and no organization anywhere ever is that there aren't enough layers of people making "contributions" that someday trickle down to people who actually do work. It's far more often the converse. You have people with an idea filtered through layers to people who will be tasked with implementing it, who clearly and succinctly explain what's wrong with the idea and how to fix it, then that useful content is filtered back out before it gets to the people who want the thing to begin with. And so yet another project cruises on towards its iceberg.
But sure, add more layers. What could possibly go wrong?
Just focusing on two parts: You think you can just thoughtlessly bolt any engine to any propeller?
Not unless you want to die. The FAA certifies them as sets. The certification process is long and involved.
And idiots still take saws-alls to propeller tips. Thinking they need 20 cm more clearance and never thinking a prop has a resonance frequency.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'