[prog] State of software engineering profession

[Mary]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003, Jimen Ching wrote:
> I don't know about the others, but it seems to me that Robert and I
> have been disagreeing through out the thread.  But that's probably due
> to miscommunication more than anything else.  Of course, you and Jenn
> (Vesperman) have been continually giving me counter-examples for each
> of my responses to Robert.  But perhaps I've misunderstood the purpose
> of those counter-examples.

As I understand the thread, the main disagreement between you and Robert
has been something like:

Robert interprets your position as:

 - the software industry is at the worst it has ever been

 - based on other industries, the software industry is well over-due for
   standardisation

He seems to disagree with both those premises (for that matter, I
disagree with the second one, given the historical development of
industries like railroad and building), but as far as I can tell,
heartily agrees with the premise that current software development
methodlogies are inadequate.

Robert and I seem to share a wariness of profound new insights into
software engineering. As he points out in one of his posts: the practice
is bad, but sometimes the theory was worse (this was in the case of
doing a complete paper design before beginning implementation).

Robert, I've tried not to misrepresent your position here, but feel free
to correct any of the above.

-Mary