Being an IT weenie from the land of OZ, I feel pretty safe in stating that our beloved government is just plain uneducated. There is no secret conspiracy (unless the Illuminati deliberately promotes politicians for their inability to evolve) and there is also no point in telling them over and over that their efforts are useless. They must appear to DOING something to keep the voting public happy.
Normally our govt is reacting to luddites who don't get how the Internet works. These luddites can be quite determined to stop that p0rn and gambling available running rife throughout it.
If you ever want a truly scary read, consider large Aussie papers where Mr/Mrs average is reacting to a story on technology by demanding that the government remove it before their kids turn into perverted casino bound, violent junkies who know how to blow things up with kitchen ingredients.
Can it really be that different in the US though? Having spent a little time there, I find myself thinking that maybe the US is just reeling through a little more red-tape to get to the same end-point.
The average politician in the US seem just as clueless and is probably just as driven by the misinformed as those of Oz. *shrug*
I think an earlier poster hit the nail on the head for me. I got UML introduced into the company after too many "psuedo-code specs" kept comming unstuck.
Eventually it came down to a realisation that a higher-level, more abstract view of the system was needed than just the code-changes if people were to understand what needed to happen.
For small, trivial changes we default back to simple specs, the overhead isn't worth it in those cases.
That said, I'm not a real fan of UML. The biggest thing it has going for it is that it's a defacto standard. The worst is that it is a standard constructed by a committee (just how many different ways do you really need to draw a diagram?). Don't get me started on the connection between Class and ER diagrams and how anything but binary relationships really sucks to model.
As to the comment about text... I'm going to disagree. An example would be reading something that describes the triggers for change of state in in complex life-cycle (say 10ish states, some as sub-states).
A diagram can impart that kind of knowledege to another in seconds. Text would take minutes if you're on the ball and hours if the coffee isn't doing its trick or you mis-interpret something.
I still like the definition given by Stewart Brand in "How Buildings Learn".
Art is a pleasure giving function.
Craft is a practical function.
If you're cutting code for a practical reason, you are engaged in craft.
If you're just tooling about for the pure pleasure of it, that's art!
With Stewart's defn, I guess you could argue that certain parts of most of my builds are artistic, others have craft aspects. (like when I have something working, but figure I can do it better or more elegantly. What was craft now becomes art).
Using that reasoning, it's probably also a function of who's paying for it and whether it's a want or a need.
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Being an IT weenie from the land of OZ, I feel pretty safe in stating that our beloved government is just plain uneducated. There is no secret conspiracy (unless the Illuminati deliberately promotes politicians for their inability to evolve) and there is also no point in telling them over and over that their efforts are useless. They must appear to DOING something to keep the voting public happy.
Normally our govt is reacting to luddites who don't get how the Internet works. These luddites can be quite determined to stop that p0rn and gambling available running rife throughout it.
If you ever want a truly scary read, consider large Aussie papers where Mr/Mrs average is reacting to a story on technology by demanding that the government remove it before their kids turn into perverted casino bound, violent junkies who know how to blow things up with kitchen ingredients.
Can it really be that different in the US though? Having spent a little time there, I find myself thinking that maybe the US is just reeling through a little more red-tape to get to the same end-point.
The average politician in the US seem just as clueless and is probably just as driven by the misinformed as those of Oz. *shrug*
I think an earlier poster hit the nail on the head for me. I got UML introduced into the company after too many "psuedo-code specs" kept comming unstuck.
Eventually it came down to a realisation that a higher-level, more abstract view of the system was needed than just the code-changes if people were to understand what needed to happen.
For small, trivial changes we default back to simple specs, the overhead isn't worth it in those cases.
That said, I'm not a real fan of UML. The biggest thing it has going for it is that it's a defacto standard. The worst is that it is a standard constructed by a committee (just how many different ways do you really need to draw a diagram?). Don't get me started on the connection between Class and ER diagrams and how anything but binary relationships really sucks to model.
As to the comment about text... I'm going to disagree. An example would be reading something that describes the triggers for change of state in in complex life-cycle (say 10ish states, some as sub-states).
A diagram can impart that kind of knowledege to another in seconds. Text would take minutes if you're on the ball and hours if the coffee isn't doing its trick or you mis-interpret something.
- Art is a pleasure giving function.
- Craft is a practical function.
If you're cutting code for a practical reason, you are engaged in craft.If you're just tooling about for the pure pleasure of it, that's art!
With Stewart's defn, I guess you could argue that certain parts of most of my builds are artistic, others have craft aspects. (like when I have something working, but figure I can do it better or more elegantly. What was craft now becomes art).
Using that reasoning, it's probably also a function of who's paying for it and whether it's a want or a need.