Warp wrote:

>   It's considered *normal* in many companies that implementing a feature
> takes several months, and if a competent programmer implements it in a
> week it causes a jaw-dropping effect. Bosses usually don't have the
> slightest idea about how long a specific features should really take
> to implement. (Often it goes both ways: Features which are small and
> can be cleanly and efficiently implemented in a few days may be implemented
> by incompetent programmers in several months, and no boss even wonders
> about it. Yet some features which truely require many months to fully
> implement even by a team of competent expert programmers might have
> completely insane deadline requirements.)

I wonder why this is the case.

I mean, if you want a bunch of construction engineers to design and 
build a bridge, the people doing the work usually have a pretty good 
idea how long it will take. What's different about software engineering?

[Other than the fact that a ridiculously badly designed bridge is 
usually at least moderately self-evident, while bad software isn't 
always...]

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> [Other than the fact that a ridiculously badly designed bridge is 
> usually at least moderately self-evident, while bad software isn't 
> always...]

  Imagine that someone hires someone else to build a bridge. The bridge
is completed and looks pretty on the outside, and it seems to work ok.
However, one day there's a lot of traffic and the bridge collapses.
It results that the bridge engineers were completely incompetent and
built the bridge completely in the wrong way, which caused it to collapse
with heavy traffic.
  In real life those engineers go to jail.

  In programming they get a new contract to develop the project further.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Imagine that someone hires someone else to build a bridge. The bridge
> is completed and looks pretty on the outside, and it seems to work ok.
> However, one day there's a lot of traffic and the bridge collapses.
> It results that the bridge engineers were completely incompetent and
> built the bridge completely in the wrong way, which caused it to collapse
> with heavy traffic.
>   In real life those engineers go to jail.
> 
>   In programming they get a new contract to develop the project further.

...OK, so I'm officially pretty worried here...

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Darren New wrote:
> Discussions of computer programming...
> 
> http://blog.slickedit.com/?p=223
If warp does 224, let me take 223 in stead.

I tend to agree in an manner. Of the university students I have had to 
fortune to supervise, when they visited our lab, over the last couple of 
years, an astonishing 100% was unable to write a decent report. They all 
had writing skills that I normally associate with 12-15 year olds. None 
of the reports conformed to a standard structure (intro (including 
problem description), methods, (results), conclusions and discussion). 
Some were almost day by day accounts of what happened '... and then we 
did... and then he said...', most did not even use the spellchecker, and 
don't get me started on grammar. Interestingly, I had nearly no say in 
the grading and they all past their exam before I had a chance to 
correct it. Apparently the society wants technicians and computer 
science experts that are unable to write. But I don't.

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andrel wrote:

> I tend to agree in an manner. Of the university students I have had to 
> fortune to supervise, when they visited our lab, over the last couple of 
> years, an astonishing 100% was unable to write a decent report. They all 
> had writing skills that I normally associate with 12-15 year olds. None 
> of the reports conformed to a standard structure (intro (including 
> problem description), methods, (results), conclusions and discussion). 
> Some were almost day by day accounts of what happened '... and then we 
> did... and then he said...', most did not even use the spellchecker, and 
> don't get me started on grammar. Interestingly, I had nearly no say in 
> the grading and they all past their exam before I had a chance to 
> correct it. Apparently the society wants technicians and computer 
> science experts that are unable to write. But I don't.

OK, now you're just describing *me*. :-(

I have no idea how to write a report...

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> andrel wrote:
> 
>> I tend to agree in an manner. Of the university students I have had to 
>> fortune to supervise, when they visited our lab, over the last couple 
>> of years, an astonishing 100% was unable to write a decent report. 
>> They all had writing skills that I normally associate with 12-15 year 
>> olds. None of the reports conformed to a standard structure (intro 
>> (including problem description), methods, (results), conclusions and 
>> discussion). Some were almost day by day accounts of what happened 
>> '... and then we did... and then he said...', most did not even use 
>> the spellchecker, and don't get me started on grammar. Interestingly, 
>> I had nearly no say in the grading and they all past their exam before 
>> I had a chance to correct it. Apparently the society wants technicians 
>> and computer science experts that are unable to write. But I don't.
> 
> OK, now you're just describing *me*. :-(
I thought about including a disclaimer that 'any resemblance to a p.o-t 
regular or mascot is purely a coincidence' but decided against it.
> 
> I have no idea how to write a report...
So how did you manage to graduate from university then? Did you not do a 
small research project?

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>> OK, now you're just describing *me*. :-(

> I thought about including a disclaimer that 'any resemblance to a p.o-t 
> regular or mascot is purely a coincidence' but decided against it.

Heh. And to think a few people claimed I had writing skills... despite 
the fact that I can't spell, can't write a report, and have lousy 
sentence construction. :-S

>> I have no idea how to write a report..

> So how did you manage to graduate from university then? Did you not do a 
> small research project?

Yes. I failed that particular module...

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Apparently the society wants technicians and computer 
> science experts that are unable to write. But I don't.

  Quite amazingly, this seems to be so even in academic circles. Well,
at least here.

  One could assume that a person who graduates as MSc, which requires,
among other things, writing an academic paper (the MSc thesis) on some
subject, would know how to write. It's an academic grade, after all, and
academic reseach is all about writing papers and publications.

  But no. Each year hundreds of people get their MSc grade here without
knowing even the basics of proper Finnish or English grammar. Their works
(which have not been spell-checked and beautified by third-parties) are
full of grammatical mistakes and poor language.

  Knowing how to write properly (in any language) is not a requisite for
admission in universities of technology, there are no mandatory courses
on academic writing (or any kind of writing), there aren't even optional
courses on writing, and bad grammar and poor writing can never be used
to penalize when grading exams or other types of written work. Basically
you are allowed to write however you want, and you are in no way expected
to be able to write properly.
  The only piece of work where some grammar is necessary is the MSc thesis,
but given that there are no requisites nor courses on the subject, they are
very lenient, and they don't mind at all if third-parties spell-check and
beautify MSc theses. In fact, it's a very common practice.

  I have always STRONGLY disagreed with this policy, and I have never heard
one single rational reason why this is done, but what can I do? It just is
the way it is.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In programming they get a new contract to develop the project further.

LOL.  Bingo!

That, and in other situations, nobody makes big changes after the specs 
are finished.

SQL Server: Hey, we need to support .NET stored procedures, and XML output.

Downtown: You know, we're glad you finished the 50-story office 
building, because now it's full of tenants. But could you add a couple 
of stores between 40 and 41?  Or at least put another bank of elevators 
on the other side of the lobby too?  Be sure not to disturb any of the 
office work already going on in the building.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
>   Quite amazingly, this seems to be so even in academic circles. Well,
> at least here.

Yah. And I've found most marketing people, many of whose jobs it is to 
write, have little or no grasp of simple things like sentence construction.

It just takes lots of practice and correction. I was fortunate to go to 
a grade school (as in, first through 12th grade) where they actually 
hammered on you ever single week to get you to improve. You started with 
"here's a topic, take it home, and bring back a one-page essay about it 
next week." It ended with "take a seat, here's your topic, you have 20 
minutes for a 2-page-with-outline essay discussing the topic."

I think the Ph.D. stuff (at least in the USA) is much more about 
reading, writing, and presenting than it is about the actual field of 
research.  Maybe places like MIT teach you more technical stuff in the 
PhD degree than the Masters degree, but that isn't the case in any of 
the places where I or my friends went.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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