day 24
| artisans of the electrosphere 1: portrait of a programmer |
 "Portrait of a Merchant" J. Gossaert c. 1478 - 1532
The contemporary idea of a programmer reminds
me of that classic painting, "Portrait of a
Merchant," dished out by Gossaert around the
time of Christopher Columbus. Staid, serious,
and focused on efficiency and business
fecundity, the popular-press image of a
programmer has led to a whole new lexicon, e.g.,
"nerd" and "transistor head." It has even
stimulated fads, e.g., pocket protector shirts
and junk food addiction. The programmer has
become a sort of anti-hero- superhuman but
disgusting. Mothers, don't let your cowboys grow
up to be programmers!
programmers has bumped along at an embarrassing
3-4% compounded annual rate, while the
productivity of hardware nerds has soared to an
annual compound rate of over 48%. Software
development is not keeping up with inflation,
meaning that production of the world's most
important products is slipping further and
further behind. This will not go unnoticed, as
there is simply too much money to be made for
programming to remain a backward and primitive
practice. After all, free enterprise abhors a
vacuum.
development failures and defeats. A colleague
recently crowed that the U.S. Government had
written off $42,000,000,000 in failed software
development projects. If the technologically
ignorant taxpayer ever finds out, we could be in
for scandal.
the warning, "the sky is falling, the sky is
falling." They have been duped into thinking
they can solve this problem if only everyone
would adopt the methodical, plodding, scientific
method. Unfortunately (though few of my friends
in academic positions will admit it), the
methodical, scientific, software engineering
approach has been a spectacular failure. The
billions of government money spent trying to
create a software science has gone down the
drain at many research institutes and
university labs. The reason? There isn't such a
thing as software engineering.
engineering and show what is really going
on. What is the future of software development?
How will the steam that drives the software age
be generated?
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artisans of the electrosphere:
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 Daily Dose Index |