Well, I was actually referring to the articles in the Wall Street Journal that said Newspapers were dramatically cutting newsprint usage. The Myth of Paperless Office is using data from before the market correction. If I recall, they used paper consumption studies from 1999.
They reported the results of a boom cycle. We are now in a cost cutting cycle. Paper producers (IP) have reported slowing sales in a slowing economy.
Considering the major changes in the economy, it is likely that this book hit the market at the peak of the per capita paper consumption curve.
Paper seems to be gradually disappearing from my life. I think this book might be published just in time to be proven wrong. I taken note of paper consumption at various offices, and found the amount of paper consumed per person drops with age.
Pre-baby and baby boomers had learned to judge their productivity as the amount of paper consumed. The main reason for the massive increase in paper usage in the computer age was that, for a very long time, most people associated productivity with pounds of paper. It will take actual generational changes for the attitude to change.
The last engineering team I was on had produced only one half a filing cabinet of paper in a year, and never filled the recycle bucket.
Paper consumption is probably a bell curve. Computers greatly enhanced our ability to produce paper. As older generations die out and new generations take over, we will probably see a gradual drop in per capita paper consumption.
There is a very good chance that the 2001/2002 tech recession will be the cusp. The Wall Street Journal reported about a week ago that there has been a sharp drop in consumption in newsprint in the last year. Newspapers have had both a big drop in advertising and subscriptions. To cut costs, they have been finding ways to trim the size of the paper. Some are cutting the stock quote section...others have simply made the paper a quarter inch smaller.
The big jump in postage prices this year (to $.37) is likely to cut into first class mail. It might provide the incentive to finally switch to electronic billings.
This Slashdot article made a big deal about airlines. Again, I think it was the WSJ, reported this week about pilots finally getting laptops to replace their paperwork. The airline was citing major productivity increase that they hoped to acheive by finally going paperless.
It will take several generations before attitudes shift to the point where a paperless office or society is possible. Personally, I think there is a very good chance that we have hit the maximum paper/person consumption.
The pundits in The Myth of the Paperless Office had fun poking fun at the paperless office prophets of the past. But they may well have published at the top of the consumption curve, and have set themselves up for the next round of ridicule.
Copyright has been a dead issue for a very long time for the music of Beethoven and Bach.
I think the internet is going lead to a mini revolution for traditional music, folk and other music forms that not under the big copyright restrictions of pop and rock.
Artists who do derivative works (like funky remakes of Mozart or the Beattles) will also be more prone to open licenses...since derivative work always gets caught up in fair use copyright litigation.
But Fama charged that the uniform licensing provision, which mandates that all PC makers receive the same contract, leaves Microsoft plenty of room to play favorites and reset terms to the detriment of PC makers.
This article is a good example of the unintended cosequences of most regulation and litigation.
In this case, MS used the courts decision that they can have only one license for all PC makers as a means for imposing stricter licensing terms on all manufacturers in a down cycle.
Each time there is a new set of regulations, MS finds a clever way to twist the rulings to their favor. Notice how MS is contributes to a development fund, then using the development fund for leverage. This gets around rebate and discount restrictions. Having a fund gives them more leverage than a rebate.
The judge's last ruling mandated that all PC makers have the same license...which eliminated the ability of different manufacturers to strike the clauses they rejected. MS used that to force restrictive clauses down the PC makers collective throats.
This happens in just about all government litigation and regulation. What happens is the strongest players are able to bend the rules to their favor, and force the smaller players into compliance or chapter 11.
You will see the same pattern in almost all industries. Companies will used the laws past against their excesses as a club against competitors.
Was this concept independently invented by coincidence, and if not, who ripped off who?
I think everyone is ripping of Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As I recall one of Arthur Dents discovery was that dolphins were the lead species on the planet, and people were just part of a computer experiment gone horribly wrong.
This is what will happen: Kids who have fast thumbs will excel at computers. Computers are now an important part in human mating rituals. This means that the fast thumbed kids of tommorrow will have more chances at mating, and will breed faster...making this a true genetic mutation. QED
Mormons are actually from the planet Kolob...not Mars. But, having lived in Utah for 20 years, I have to admit that locating the space ship in Utah (especially rural Utah) will get the Mars Society accustomed to dealing with alien cultures.
Stop poking fun at this article. There are some very some very serious social ramifications of this adaptation/mutation. It clarifies some important trends I have seen in my life time.
My parent's generation was most adept at using the index finger...and they always accelled in the art of wagging it at me.
My generation: let's just say that we learned to use the middle finger, and would wave it back.
The kids today are in a horrid situation. In US culture, thumbs up means "A Okay". They are transforming into an anything goes generation. They seem just willing to give thumbs up to anything
Of course there are some terrible international implication. I understand that an Arab thumbs up is the same as a New York middle finger. Like all important sociological articles of the day, this brings us back to 9/11. Could this mutation be the real cause for the current US/Middle East crusade?
My guess is that the researcher will realize that he put the wrong end of the thermometer in the experiement and that the foam was actually insulating. He will then quietly fade into the background hoping no-one noticed the gafaw.
There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand.
If the internet bandwidth usage grows at 80% a year then I think shortages are likely. The introduction of video on demand will cause a spike that you really can't predict. Mostly, we will continue not getting every thing we want when we want it.
The really sad thing, though, is the disappearance of the smaller companies before the growth phase. The current consolidation will give the monopolies the power to ream consumers and stifle and control distribution.
BTW, I used GST when they ventured into the local market. I wish local competition had emerged, but there were enough saps like me around to keep them afloat.
Uh, there is no such thing as "just an investigation."
I worked for a government agency. It was absurd because all of the policies would go through these weird legal distortions. If they wanted a simple policy, say changing from a 15 to 20 minute break, they would pass a law, and it would be illegal to take an 15 minute break. They lost the ability for people to communicate with people as people.
ORBZ may have been a bit cavalier in its testing of security holes in servers, but was altruistically trying to perform a service. Instead of trying to communicate, however, the legal system immediately jumps into litigation confrontation and threats. It is really a screwed up system.
I agree, stuffing the viral marketing concept into software was a horrid mistake, and is a major reason why I avoid the GPL issue. Look at all the white noise created by the people trying to force this thing down everyone's gullet. One of the main complaints of theKompany was the incessant humming caused by GPL rants, source code requests, etc.. I understand the desire to be able to focus on ideas and work, and not this type of stuff.
Quote from the article:
I think far too many people spend far too much time and mental energy tied up in license discussions when their creativity and focus could be spent building something fantastic for themselves or maybe the community.
If I wanted to waste my life yammering about legalese, I would have gone to law school and make more money. Have you notice how lawyers tend to strut about blabbering about their great altruism, and some seem to sneak out the back door with all the cash. GPL is just another case showing that people feigning altruism generally have a deeper greed than the people they denounce.
I've given out a great deal of code. Released stuff into the public domain, etc.. But I would never touch the GPL just as I try to avoid forwarding email with virii. If I give something away, I do so because I want to help increase the knowledgebase (some times just cause I am an egotistical snob) but never because I want to spawn a revolution.
BTW, I dislike the viral nature of other licenses as well. A lot of contracts have this nasty effect. Having a non-disclosure agreement in one contract will force its way through other contracts. If your code encapsulates someone elses code, then your license has to encapsulates the other license. In just about all cases, however, the legalese ends up diverting attention from the problems to be solved to pure power mongering. TheKompany has x amount of altruism. They want to spend that on the community. The people people pounding at the door demanding the souce code were simply playing power mongering games.
I have to agree with Shawn Gordon. Life is too short to waste it on chain letters and GPL.
He should be able to figure out how long it would take to finish a statue of somebody my size. Equally he should beable to finish a painting of a subject that's been selected prior to him starting his job.
This would be a nice ideal world. Unfortunatley, programmers spend most of their frustrating hours hashing on the unknowns. When you have a good statue generation program, then it is only a matter of executing it to create a statue of travis@scootz.net, but making that statue is the kicker.
The commenting issue is rather interesting. For some odd reason, I have very little problem reading computer code. I really don't care too much for the comments. When examing another person's work, I will often strip all the comments so I can see more of the code on the screen.
Other people seem to like comments. It might be the case that this is a factor of how long you have been coding.
I agree 100% with the assertion that the cost of long term support is part of the productivity of the coder, but, to an extent, the coder does not control the deciding factor in this cost, which is the personality of the person who does the support work.
It didn't sell anything and therefore the programmers were not productive? I don't think so.
Hate to admit it, but the actually productivity of the entire company is a critical element in the success of the programmer. A programmer who's personality disorders (a good description of me) causes his products to be rejected one after the other is not productive.
A coder might write extremely fast, clean efficient code, but if the code is not used for what ever political, personality or other problems that blocked the code then, in this sense, the programmer was not "productive."
On the other hand, it is extremely productive for society to have a number of these risk taking initiatives in the works. The common figure that 90% of software projects fail is sad but not a total loss because the few successful products that evolve out of the fray generally make up for the loss.
Here is a good question. If a KDE programmer ads a super cool feature to the product "yafflte" (yet another failed free linux text editor) and Microsoft reverse engineers the feature and includes it in Winword, who was the productive one?
After 17 years, don't you think your postulations should improve on previous work. Have you done any research on prior publications?
Uh, it looks like this blurb was introduced as an item of discussion and not a research paper. I thought the blurb was cleaning written and succinct about an issue of interest to many/.ers. These observations are easy to deduce. The issue of productivity has been hashed by philosphers, economists and others for millinnea. Most of What DeMarco said 17 years ago was simply rehashing of others works.
Economists generally define productivity as the amount of money that your product brings in compared to the hours you worked on it. In this case, the MS programmer who dropped a nasty bug in WinWord, and caused the MS faithful to spend a few billion dollars on the next WinWord release would qualify as the most productive programmer of the year.
Yeah, it is funny how the process of packaging up a program to make it "sellable" and uncopyable tends to compromise the program. Of course, the program would have never existed if there was not a profit motive, but the actual act of trying to get that cash payment seems to result in compromise.
I agree, it looks more like a ploy to get you to buy spare XP licenses--not to wipe other companies off the face of the planet. That is if you access XP through VPN from linux, you need an extra XP license. This clause does build the monopoly, because it gives an incentive to not having different OSes in the office...i mean you will have to pay for an extra XP license anyway for VPN, so you save nothing by having a linux machine.
unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
You are also right about wanting to see the definition of "The Product" since that is the key of the definition.
Old monopolies never die. Look at the automotive and gas industries. Standard Oil is slowly putting itself back together.
Now that we are out of that rapid growth phase of computers and internet, we could well see the reforming of old monopolies, as all the little companies, one by one, fall to the wayside. IBM is a good conservative company with long term growth stategies and connections. I would not be surprised to discover that IBM has increased its market share quite dramatically during the last two years of the tech sector crash.
Save the cash and concentrate on getting a real CS degree. I would also take a lot of math, and really learn programming theory, not just Microsoft's implementation.
You might look through the job boards. You will see more people asking for CS degrees than certifications. I think this trend will continue. Also the really cool design jobs will all demand a mastery of theory. Some will even look down on certs.
Certtifications tend to lose their luster as they age. The people who pass the certs in the first few weeks are generally the tops in their field. They then tell the questions to the book publishers. The publishers then create memorize the answer CBTs. Utimately, you get to the place where passing or failing a certification becomes more a matter of the course material you purchased than the knowledge of the program. I think it is somewhat a crooked field.
I worked for a company that boasted that anyone could get a MCSE if they memorized the answers to the questions. Students work for several weeks in a row memorizing answers, with just a little bit of work on the programs to break the monotony...these students did significantly better than those who studied the program. Guess what? HR departments know about this, further discount the certs.
Unless you can identify documented case studies supporting your implausible thesis
My implausible thesis (that small groups can outperform large programming groups) has a large number of case studies and research. I apologize that I do not keep a detailed list of every thing I've read so I can whip out the case studies.
This subject was the main thesis of Frederick Brook's Mythical Man Month. Adding man months (i.e. more people) to projects does not always increase the speed of development. This phenomena has been reported on by other noted authors such as Edward Yourdan. Economists refer to this as the law of diminishing returns. I recall that both Yourdan and Brooks pointing to case studies. I did come across several studies on this topic in the IBM System Review, but don't have them on hand right now.
I did not say that there is a one size fits all solution to the size of development teams. Simply that small is not a bad way to go. Sometimes adding people increases productivity, some times it just adds overhead.
Again, this is called the law of diminishing returns. I can find case studies for you, but that seems like a trivial waste of time for a slashdot thread.
There have also been case studies which show extremely wide gaps in productivity between programmers. Again, I don't have these on hand, and can only point to my experience that some people get a lot more done than others.
I certainly did not say that a small team is guaranteed of success. Just like big teams are not guaranteed success.
Now lets get back to the article. What it says is that a small programming group is working through the code of existing products and adding a few enhancements here and there. They are enhancing some objects, adding a few new objects. This all seems quite doable. I have added enhancements to programs with 100M lines of code that, according to the tests, worked.
Using small focussed teams is a proven and cost effective means of programming. It is one of the reason why people both with that object oriented nonesense that you read about in books. If I have to cite case studies, I probably could waste a few hours and fill the board with several hundred. But that seems like a waste of time.
BTW the article mentioned that they had problems with integration issues, like filters, which generally require a great deal of testing and man hours. Some areas of development require more man hours than others.
Very good post. A large amount of free and open source code carries the stipulation that it will not be used by the military. You might find a good deal of the code you want to use carries this stipulation.
If, however, these combat systems were to be _sold_ (or given away, though that's unlikely)
Selling military equipment is a multibillion dollar business. Where do you think we get all our cheap gas? We've been trading military technology for cheap oil in the mideast for ages.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was actually referring to the articles in the Wall Street Journal that said Newspapers were dramatically cutting newsprint usage. The Myth of Paperless Office is using data from before the market correction. If I recall, they used paper consumption studies from 1999.
They reported the results of a boom cycle. We are now in a cost cutting cycle. Paper producers (IP) have reported slowing sales in a slowing economy.
Considering the major changes in the economy, it is likely that this book hit the market at the peak of the per capita paper consumption curve.
...the tough question: What wine goes good with a universe?
Salmon
Paper seems to be gradually disappearing from my life. I think this book might be published just in time to be proven wrong. I taken note of paper consumption at various offices, and found the amount of paper consumed per person drops with age.
Pre-baby and baby boomers had learned to judge their productivity as the amount of paper consumed. The main reason for the massive increase in paper usage in the computer age was that, for a very long time, most people associated productivity with pounds of paper. It will take actual generational changes for the attitude to change.
The last engineering team I was on had produced only one half a filing cabinet of paper in a year, and never filled the recycle bucket.
Paper consumption is probably a bell curve. Computers greatly enhanced our ability to produce paper. As older generations die out and new generations take over, we will probably see a gradual drop in per capita paper consumption.
There is a very good chance that the 2001/2002 tech recession will be the cusp. The Wall Street Journal reported about a week ago that there has been a sharp drop in consumption in newsprint in the last year. Newspapers have had both a big drop in advertising and subscriptions. To cut costs, they have been finding ways to trim the size of the paper. Some are cutting the stock quote section...others have simply made the paper a quarter inch smaller.
The big jump in postage prices this year (to $.37) is likely to cut into first class mail. It might provide the incentive to finally switch to electronic billings.
This Slashdot article made a big deal about airlines. Again, I think it was the WSJ, reported this week about pilots finally getting laptops to replace their paperwork. The airline was citing major productivity increase that they hoped to acheive by finally going paperless.
It will take several generations before attitudes shift to the point where a paperless office or society is possible. Personally, I think there is a very good chance that we have hit the maximum paper/person consumption.
The pundits in The Myth of the Paperless Office had fun poking fun at the paperless office prophets of the past. But they may well have published at the top of the consumption curve, and have set themselves up for the next round of ridicule.
Copyright has been a dead issue for a very long time for the music of Beethoven and Bach.
I think the internet is going lead to a mini revolution for traditional music, folk and other music forms that not under the big copyright restrictions of pop and rock.
Artists who do derivative works (like funky remakes of Mozart or the Beattles) will also be more prone to open licenses...since derivative work always gets caught up in fair use copyright litigation.
This article is a good example of the unintended cosequences of most regulation and litigation.
In this case, MS used the courts decision that they can have only one license for all PC makers as a means for imposing stricter licensing terms on all manufacturers in a down cycle.Each time there is a new set of regulations, MS finds a clever way to twist the rulings to their favor. Notice how MS is contributes to a development fund, then using the development fund for leverage. This gets around rebate and discount restrictions. Having a fund gives them more leverage than a rebate.
The judge's last ruling mandated that all PC makers have the same license...which eliminated the ability of different manufacturers to strike the clauses they rejected. MS used that to force restrictive clauses down the PC makers collective throats.
This happens in just about all government litigation and regulation. What happens is the strongest players are able to bend the rules to their favor, and force the smaller players into compliance or chapter 11.
You will see the same pattern in almost all industries. Companies will used the laws past against their excesses as a club against competitors.
Was this concept independently invented by coincidence, and if not, who ripped off who?
I think everyone is ripping of Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As I recall one of Arthur Dents discovery was that dolphins were the lead species on the planet, and people were just part of a computer experiment gone horribly wrong.
This is what will happen: Kids who have fast thumbs will excel at computers. Computers are now an important part in human mating rituals. This means that the fast thumbed kids of tommorrow will have more chances at mating, and will breed faster...making this a true genetic mutation. QED
Mormons are actually from the planet Kolob...not Mars. But, having lived in Utah for 20 years, I have to admit that locating the space ship in Utah (especially rural Utah) will get the Mars Society accustomed to dealing with alien cultures.
I am sure you have seen the Onion article on Dolphins Evolving Thumbs...scary stuff.
Stop poking fun at this article. There are some very some very serious social ramifications of this adaptation/mutation. It clarifies some important trends I have seen in my life time.
My parent's generation was most adept at using the index finger...and they always accelled in the art of wagging it at me.
My generation: let's just say that we learned to use the middle finger, and would wave it back.
The kids today are in a horrid situation. In US culture, thumbs up means "A Okay". They are transforming into an anything goes generation. They seem just willing to give thumbs up to anything
Of course there are some terrible international implication. I understand that an Arab thumbs up is the same as a New York middle finger. Like all important sociological articles of the day, this brings us back to 9/11. Could this mutation be the real cause for the current US/Middle East crusade?
My guess is that the researcher will realize that he put the wrong end of the thermometer in the experiement and that the foam was actually insulating. He will then quietly fade into the background hoping no-one noticed the gafaw.
There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand.
If the internet bandwidth usage grows at 80% a year then I think shortages are likely. The introduction of video on demand will cause a spike that you really can't predict. Mostly, we will continue not getting every thing we want when we want it.
The really sad thing, though, is the disappearance of the smaller companies before the growth phase. The current consolidation will give the monopolies the power to ream consumers and stifle and control distribution.
BTW, I used GST when they ventured into the local market. I wish local competition had emerged, but there were enough saps like me around to keep them afloat.
It was just an investigation.
Uh, there is no such thing as "just an investigation."
I worked for a government agency. It was absurd because all of the policies would go through these weird legal distortions. If they wanted a simple policy, say changing from a 15 to 20 minute break, they would pass a law, and it would be illegal to take an 15 minute break. They lost the ability for people to communicate with people as people.
ORBZ may have been a bit cavalier in its testing of security holes in servers, but was altruistically trying to perform a service. Instead of trying to communicate, however, the legal system immediately jumps into litigation confrontation and threats. It is really a screwed up system.
I agree, stuffing the viral marketing concept into software was a horrid mistake, and is a major reason why I avoid the GPL issue. Look at all the white noise created by the people trying to force this thing down everyone's gullet. One of the main complaints of theKompany was the incessant humming caused by GPL rants, source code requests, etc.. I understand the desire to be able to focus on ideas and work, and not this type of stuff.
Quote from the article:
I think far too many people spend far too much time and mental energy tied up in license discussions when their creativity and focus could be spent building something fantastic for themselves or maybe the community.
If I wanted to waste my life yammering about legalese, I would have gone to law school and make more money. Have you notice how lawyers tend to strut about blabbering about their great altruism, and some seem to sneak out the back door with all the cash. GPL is just another case showing that people feigning altruism generally have a deeper greed than the people they denounce.
I've given out a great deal of code. Released stuff into the public domain, etc.. But I would never touch the GPL just as I try to avoid forwarding email with virii. If I give something away, I do so because I want to help increase the knowledgebase (some times just cause I am an egotistical snob) but never because I want to spawn a revolution.
BTW, I dislike the viral nature of other licenses as well. A lot of contracts have this nasty effect. Having a non-disclosure agreement in one contract will force its way through other contracts. If your code encapsulates someone elses code, then your license has to encapsulates the other license. In just about all cases, however, the legalese ends up diverting attention from the problems to be solved to pure power mongering. TheKompany has x amount of altruism. They want to spend that on the community. The people people pounding at the door demanding the souce code were simply playing power mongering games.
I have to agree with Shawn Gordon. Life is too short to waste it on chain letters and GPL.
kd
He should be able to figure out how long it would take to finish a statue of somebody my size. Equally he should beable to finish a painting of a subject that's been selected prior to him starting his job.
This would be a nice ideal world. Unfortunatley, programmers spend most of their frustrating hours hashing on the unknowns. When you have a good statue generation program, then it is only a matter of executing it to create a statue of travis@scootz.net, but making that statue is the kicker.
The commenting issue is rather interesting. For some odd reason, I have very little problem reading computer code. I really don't care too much for the comments. When examing another person's work, I will often strip all the comments so I can see more of the code on the screen.
Other people seem to like comments. It might be the case that this is a factor of how long you have been coding.
I agree 100% with the assertion that the cost of long term support is part of the productivity of the coder, but, to an extent, the coder does not control the deciding factor in this cost, which is the personality of the person who does the support work.
It didn't sell anything and therefore the programmers were not productive? I don't think so.
Hate to admit it, but the actually productivity of the entire company is a critical element in the success of the programmer. A programmer who's personality disorders (a good description of me) causes his products to be rejected one after the other is not productive.
A coder might write extremely fast, clean efficient code, but if the code is not used for what ever political, personality or other problems that blocked the code then, in this sense, the programmer was not "productive."
On the other hand, it is extremely productive for society to have a number of these risk taking initiatives in the works. The common figure that 90% of software projects fail is sad but not a total loss because the few successful products that evolve out of the fray generally make up for the loss.
Here is a good question. If a KDE programmer ads a super cool feature to the product "yafflte" (yet another failed free linux text editor) and Microsoft reverse engineers the feature and includes it in Winword, who was the productive one?
After 17 years, don't you think your postulations should improve on previous work. Have you done any research on prior publications?
/.ers. These observations are easy to deduce. The issue of productivity has been hashed by philosphers, economists and others for millinnea. Most of What DeMarco said 17 years ago was simply rehashing of others works.
Uh, it looks like this blurb was introduced as an item of discussion and not a research paper. I thought the blurb was cleaning written and succinct about an issue of interest to many
Economists generally define productivity as the amount of money that your product brings in compared to the hours you worked on it. In this case, the MS programmer who dropped a nasty bug in WinWord, and caused the MS faithful to spend a few billion dollars on the next WinWord release would qualify as the most productive programmer of the year.
Yeah, it is funny how the process of packaging up a program to make it "sellable" and uncopyable tends to compromise the program. Of course, the program would have never existed if there was not a profit motive, but the actual act of trying to get that cash payment seems to result in compromise.
I agree, it looks more like a ploy to get you to buy spare XP licenses--not to wipe other companies off the face of the planet. That is if you access XP through VPN from linux, you need an extra XP license. This clause does build the monopoly, because it gives an incentive to not having different OSes in the office...i mean you will have to pay for an extra XP license anyway for VPN, so you save nothing by having a linux machine.
unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
You are also right about wanting to see the definition of "The Product" since that is the key of the definition.
Old monopolies never die. Look at the automotive and gas industries. Standard Oil is slowly putting itself back together.
Now that we are out of that rapid growth phase of computers and internet, we could well see the reforming of old monopolies, as all the little companies, one by one, fall to the wayside. IBM is a good conservative company with long term growth stategies and connections. I would not be surprised to discover that IBM has increased its market share quite dramatically during the last two years of the tech sector crash.
Save the cash and concentrate on getting a real CS degree. I would also take a lot of math, and really learn programming theory, not just Microsoft's implementation.
You might look through the job boards. You will see more people asking for CS degrees than certifications. I think this trend will continue. Also the really cool design jobs will all demand a mastery of theory. Some will even look down on certs.
Certtifications tend to lose their luster as they age. The people who pass the certs in the first few weeks are generally the tops in their field. They then tell the questions to the book publishers. The publishers then create memorize the answer CBTs. Utimately, you get to the place where passing or failing a certification becomes more a matter of the course material you purchased than the knowledge of the program. I think it is somewhat a crooked field.
I worked for a company that boasted that anyone could get a MCSE if they memorized the answers to the questions. Students work for several weeks in a row memorizing answers, with just a little bit of work on the programs to break the monotony...these students did significantly better than those who studied the program. Guess what? HR departments know about this, further discount the certs.
Unless you can identify documented case studies supporting your implausible thesis
My implausible thesis (that small groups can outperform large programming groups) has a large number of case studies and research. I apologize that I do not keep a detailed list of every thing I've read so I can whip out the case studies.
This subject was the main thesis of Frederick Brook's Mythical Man Month. Adding man months (i.e. more people) to projects does not always increase the speed of development. This phenomena has been reported on by other noted authors such as Edward Yourdan. Economists refer to this as the law of diminishing returns. I recall that both Yourdan and Brooks pointing to case studies. I did come across several studies on this topic in the IBM System Review, but don't have them on hand right now.
I did not say that there is a one size fits all solution to the size of development teams. Simply that small is not a bad way to go. Sometimes adding people increases productivity, some times it just adds overhead.
Again, this is called the law of diminishing returns. I can find case studies for you, but that seems like a trivial waste of time for a slashdot thread.
There have also been case studies which show extremely wide gaps in productivity between programmers. Again, I don't have these on hand, and can only point to my experience that some people get a lot more done than others.
I certainly did not say that a small team is guaranteed of success. Just like big teams are not guaranteed success. Now lets get back to the article. What it says is that a small programming group is working through the code of existing products and adding a few enhancements here and there. They are enhancing some objects, adding a few new objects. This all seems quite doable. I have added enhancements to programs with 100M lines of code that, according to the tests, worked.
Using small focussed teams is a proven and cost effective means of programming. It is one of the reason why people both with that object oriented nonesense that you read about in books. If I have to cite case studies, I probably could waste a few hours and fill the board with several hundred. But that seems like a waste of time.
BTW the article mentioned that they had problems with integration issues, like filters, which generally require a great deal of testing and man hours. Some areas of development require more man hours than others.
Very good post. A large amount of free and open source code carries the stipulation that it will not be used by the military. You might find a good deal of the code you want to use carries this stipulation.
If, however, these combat systems were to be _sold_ (or given away, though that's unlikely)
Selling military equipment is a multibillion dollar business. Where do you think we get all our cheap gas? We've been trading military technology for cheap oil in the mideast for ages.