[clug] [OT] Bjarne Stroustrop on

[Stephen Gream]

To take a line from Mike Bowern here.... "Software development is not a cottage industry anymore; It's an engineering discipline". I don't really have anything else to say on this

----- Original Message -----
From: Alex Satrapa <grail at goldweb.com.au>
Date: Thursday, April 8, 2010 1:54 pm
Subject: Re: [clug] [OT] Bjarne Stroustrop on
To: CLUG List <linux at lists.samba.org>

> On 08/04/2010, at 12:32 , Steve McInerney wrote:
> 
> > But I had studied computing theories at Uni. I knew the theory 
> of how
> > memory worked and generically the how & why of how to code 
> (structured)> in low level languages like assemblers; as well as 
> higher like C,
> > Pascal, Modula2 and Cobol.
> 
> These are more like trade skills, from my perspective: a plumber 
> learns about basics such as "water follows the path of least 
> resistance", what situations you'd use an S-bend over a U-bend, 
> how to braze copper versus glue plastic, basic differences 
> between handling drinking water, storm water and sewage. Perhaps 
> they'd be taught about the perils of letting dirty water sit 
> still for too long too.
> 
> After that you get exposed to "real life" where your first job 
> as a plumber involves laying sewage, drinking water and recycled 
> water pipes for an estate of 2000 homes. Suddenly you're finding 
> out about how to drive a backhoe.
> 
> A plumbing scientist on the other hand would be researching new 
> materials for building pipes, different ways of handling sewage 
> to prevent buildups of explosive gasses in kilometres long runs 
> of sewer, and pipes that make water run uphill. The Science part 
> involves the research discipline, more so than the test-build-
> test discipline of the engineer/programmer.
> 
> Scientific discipline is good, but test-build-test is a specific 
> example of it that we can teach to folks rather than having 
> every programmer trying to solve problems in an industrial 
> setting by performing rigorous experimentation and inventing new 
> computing models.
> 
> Just my two bits worth :)
> Alex
> 
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