Philosophies of IT

Lion Templin writes "Despite the extremely dry topic, "Philosophical Changes in 1990's Information Technology" covers a broad history of IT and makes a strong suggestion as to why the industry is what it is today. A main focus is the differing philsophies of traditional "academia" related 'mainframers' versus the fast-paced 'micros' that predominate most of the IT industry today. Written as university research, it's been read by several people in the IT field and received good responses."

Comments

Sentimental, academic, long-winded, naive.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the bottom line: greed has crept into the computer industry; if more people would just be "idealistic" computer science folks instead of "mercenary" software engineers then the world would be a better place.

The one big mistake of Lion's premise that Software Engineering is not new. It's as old as the computer and engineering methodoliges are as old as the stone tools of the neanderthals.

Sorry, "Lion", science and engineering are not incompatible and both will drive developments in the computer industry for a long time.

-ac

P.S. Hey, lamerators : Moderate This!

Nothing but criticism

[Cordova]

I've been frequenting /. for a few months now, and I have never seen such a harsh critique. Every comment so far except this one seems to think Lion's paper should be drawn and quartered.

I know most people here are techies and linux addicts, hell I'm one of them; but why not actually try to figure out what the writer is trying to communicate instead of tearing specifics of the article apart.

HUMBLE REQUEST
If any of you have better opinions on where the industry is going to go, in reference to methods/philosophy/ethics in development mentioned in the paper. I want to read them. Reply to this, or even post your own writings to /., I don't care. Give me better ideas, not "you didn't have every single little fact right in your article".

Cordova

"Can't lurk all the time"

So, where are things headed ???

[dillon_rinker]

Hey, Bone Crusher. I'm the guy who had to take over your project after you left. You talk about a "final product". That's a mythical beast; there will always be a 1.01, a 1.2, a 2.0 and so on - unless you're writing code for a space probe that will never again be touched by human hand (and even then, they're likely to tinker via radio).

Without the documentation that you so kindly glossed over, I had to make guesses about what your code was supposed to do. Don't kid yourself - there were bugs in your code. I could tell what your code was actually doing, but sometimes it was hard to tell what it was supposed to do. But I did the best I could. And because you didn't document what you had done in your 45,000 lines of code, I had to go over every single line, trying to find where you had implemented that function they wanted changed RIGHT NOW. Don't get me wrong - it was fun to have half the organization breathing down my neck, wanting to know why I couldn't just read the specs, find the function, and change it. And your reasons for choosing the original architecture were doubtless sound, but a month or so after you left, the Big Boss came back from a seminar and said we should have done it as a intranet-based centralized client-server structured object-oriented module. And I didn't have the time to analyze the entire application and tell him why he was wrong, and you hadn't left any record of WHY your architecture was better, so I had to capitulate.

This probably pleases you. You probably feel like Mel, the real programmer, whose code was fast, functional, and incomprehensible. You think if I was only as good as you are, I wouldn't have these problems - I'd be writing my own 1.0s instead of maintaining your code. You may be right, and I hope it gives you warm fuzzies. I hope you enjoy feeling like an artist. But I hope you realize that there is nothing left of your art. By the time we hit version 6.24.06a, not a single line of your code was left. It was like you had painted this beautiful vision of the Mandelbrot set on the wall of the Louvre, only they changed their mind and asked me for a surrealist landscape, so I sandblasted it a bit at a time and transformed your vision into mine.

I'll be leaving the project pretty soon now - going to work for Microsoft. Bill says it's important - something about how they're going to be the next Red Hat. Anyway, I know that whoever takes my place won't be as good as me, and won't have my experience on this project, but at least they will be able to understand my thought-processes while developing the program. I bit the bullet, sucked it up, and followed the documentation procedures.

I don't really disagree with your points on freedom or one-size-fits-all templates. But don't skimp on documentation. Those who have to maintain your code thank you.

So, where are things headed ???

[BoneCrusher]

Well, I guess we /.'ed the server...only made it
through about half then it went south. Oh well.

Grated there are numerous errors both historically
and others, however there is a point I think the author is trying to make. Having not exactly finished the article, I am going out on a limb here. But I think the point is one size does not fit all.

All the IT organizations I have interacted with in recent years recite this singular thought like a mantra.

I dont know about others, but I get results because I still treat systems architecture and software development as a art. I cut corners in the "software engineering", "process documentation", and other more bureaucratic areas where it makes sense without compromising the final product. This drives IT types crazy.

I have noticed this more in recent years than in the 80's. Back in the days of PDP's, Vaxen, BSD, etc, each project had its own set of challenges.
We were allowed the freedom to overcome those by whatever methods were available.

The 90's were just the opposite...try to do every project using the same template.

So is the pendulum swinging back? Have we come full circle ? I dont know. But I do know that OSS
gives me the tools I need to crank out solutions at an ever increasing rate to meet demand. I also know that IT types are watching very closly trying to figure out "How'ed they do that!!!".