Dave, I think you are right on.
If only everyone thought as you do, I'd probably still be working as a Nuclear Engineer/Health Physicist. The number of people who think they know something about nuclear power generation is dumbfounding. With Regards, Lonny Eckert -----Original Message----- From: Dave Watts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 4:10 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: programmer vs. developer > I couldn't answer too many of your "Software Engineering > principles" questions, but I can solve problems, and that's > what my employer wants. My background is accounting, but I > spent all my time automating my tasks using Excel/VBA/VB, > so I ended up going into programming. Nothing personal, but > you'd be the last type of manager I would want to have. A > degree means you made it through four (or more) years of > school, and that's it. I've known a lot of people with CS > degrees that couldn't solve problems. I think you're selling short the value of a CS background. Sure, there are lots of people with CS degrees who lack problem-solving skills. There are incompetents in every field, except for those fields in which incompetence is weeded out automatically (incompetent soldiers being more likely to die in combat, for example). That's not much of an argument against the value of a CS degree, though. I don't have a CS background either. However, I've always worked with people who do, and I've found myself learning the lessons they'd been taught - and I had to learn them the hard way, by trial and error. I would miss subtleties that they would spot immediately, because of their training. For those people, a degree meant quite a bit more than "making it through four years of school" - it meant that they had gained a way to examine and classify problems, and provide solutions that meet those "software engineering" standards. This is not a trivial ability. If I turned your initial statement on its head, I could say something like "my background is programming, but I spent all my time adding up numbers, so I ended up going into accounting." I think my CFO would probably take issue with that, if I presented myself as a competent accountant simply because I had decent math skills. Any profession has a body of knowledge that has to be understood by practitioners of that profession. Likewise, I wouldn't necessarily be a competent surgeon just because I'm handy with a knife. I think in both those examples, you can see the value of "principles". Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ voice: (202) 797-5496 fax: (202) 797-5444 ______________________________________________________________________ Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
