You have to have programmers in the XP mode who can do good code quickly, and also have talented designers/analysists producing the specs, people who have understood the business context. The point is that they can and should be separate roles, with different drivers and different (though overlapping) skills required.
I think the idea here is that programmers all too often get embroiled in activities like deciding which functionality elements should be implemented in v1, deciding how the component should be described for the marketers, and so forth.
Coders, essentially, produce code. They don't (or shouldn't) have to understand the business context around that code, except in as far as understanding that process X needs to be fast, and process Y needs good fail-safety etc. Things that are quantifiable to a programmer.
Too many coders get sucked into management. Though admittedly, this is exactly what many of them want...
Anyway, as an aside, XP is about more than just cutting your job down to coding. It's also the techniques for producing good code. And very cool fun to do, too.
To be honest, Microsoft have contributed massively to the modern world.
I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost... "God is dead." - Nietszche
Re:Did he look at long-term effects?
on
Virtual Addiction
·
· Score: 3
My point is that the long-term effects of geeking can be more beneficial than y'might think at the time. Back in the day, I was failing classes and annoying girlfriends left and right. Now... they pay me for it. Hmmm....
You have girlfriends that pay you for annoying them? This internet thing is more useful than I thought...
Recently in the UK, sites have been forced by court ruling to name people who posted 'anonymously' on their sites. These people had not done anything illegal, but had been abusive. Where does the US sit on this issue? Presumably you force sites to name people who are commiting illegal activity, but can you force a site to name someone who hasn't said anything illegal, but is being defamatory or misleading?
This has been in force in England (and probably the rest of europe) for a few years now. It means games with lots of blood and guts get rated 18, and the 12-yr olds have to get their older brother to buy it for them.
It's the same as with films. Why should this be a problem? It's not going to cause anyone any strife, and an 18-rating generally IMPROVES sales of the game!
... and in the end it only works for certain kinds of programs (programs which are dominated by loops with predictable structure).
This is certainly true, but then there are a fair few things of this nature which, if code is tailored for, can be massively optimised.
The example that springs to mind is Quake-style rendering routines... If this code was suitably analysed (at copmile time i guess), a multi-processor array could safely parallelise the code and gain a linear performance improvement.
The point about thread-level data speculation is valid, and there again it is a matter of annotated compilation. Roll on next-generation languages for parallel systems. Code morphing is not the answer...
Generally, people writing code for a warship would want a safety-critical system.
I think most safety critical systems are blue-screen free...
While governments may use ms os's for their office type stuff, and they may be (just may be...) hackable, there's no danger at all of a nuclear plant blowing up, or some secret SDI platform in the stratosphere nuking Texas.
Bit of a shame really...
Slashdot Mirror
You see, I only ordered one file, but they sent me two, so i'm selling this one on for next to nothing...
Go on, man, this stuff's golddust you know. You Can't get this just anywhere...
"God is dead." - Nietszche
You have to have programmers in the XP mode who can do good code quickly, and also have talented designers/analysists producing the specs, people who have understood the business context. The point is that they can and should be separate roles, with different drivers and different (though overlapping) skills required.
"God is dead." - Nietszche
Coders, essentially, produce code. They don't (or shouldn't) have to understand the business context around that code, except in as far as understanding that process X needs to be fast, and process Y needs good fail-safety etc. Things that are quantifiable to a programmer.
Too many coders get sucked into management. Though admittedly, this is exactly what many of them want...
Anyway, as an aside, XP is about more than just cutting your job down to coding. It's also the techniques for producing good code. And very cool fun to do, too.
"God is dead." - Nietszche
I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost...
"God is dead." - Nietszche
You have girlfriends that pay you for annoying them? This internet thing is more useful than I thought...
"God is dead." - Nietszche
Recently in the UK, sites have been forced by court ruling to name people who posted 'anonymously' on their sites. These people had not done anything illegal, but had been abusive. Where does the US sit on this issue?
Presumably you force sites to name people who are commiting illegal activity, but can you force a site to name someone who hasn't said anything illegal, but is being defamatory or misleading?
I probably should have posted this as AC...
"God is dead." -Nietsche
It's the same as with films. Why should this be a problem? It's not going to cause anyone any strife, and an 18-rating generally IMPROVES sales of the game!
"God is dead." -Nietsche
This is certainly true, but then there are a fair few things of this nature which, if code is tailored for, can be massively optimised.
The example that springs to mind is Quake-style rendering routines... If this code was suitably analysed (at copmile time i guess), a multi-processor array could safely parallelise the code and gain a linear performance improvement.
The point about thread-level data speculation is valid, and there again it is a matter of annotated compilation. Roll on next-generation languages for parallel systems. Code morphing is not the answer...
Generally, people writing code for a warship would want a safety-critical system. I think most safety critical systems are blue-screen free... While governments may use ms os's for their office type stuff, and they may be (just may be...) hackable, there's no danger at all of a nuclear plant blowing up, or some secret SDI platform in the stratosphere nuking Texas. Bit of a shame really...