On 7/15/05, Manoj Srivastava va, manoj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What's with the recent push to get every little things written > down into policy, so the developer no longer is required to have an > ability to think, or exercise any judgement whatsoever?
Welcome to the software industry in 2005. If you haven't yet encountered a "senior software engineer" with three degrees and a six-figure salary who couldn't debug his way out of a paper bag, you work in a very different part of the industry than I do. [Note that I am not accusing Nico or anyone else in Debian of fitting this description.] The threshold at which it is actually rather improbable that one totally lacks the capacity for independent judgment seems to be "principal engineer" -- a director equivalent in many large companies. I have worked with a number of junior staff whose performance exceeded my expectations for their level of seniority -- including at least one guy with a so-so high school education who was more able than several MSCS's I have known -- but they are very much the exceptions rather than the rule. It's not the lack of (programming or human) language skills that's the problem -- it's the lack of thinking skills. I don't know if they can be taught, but they certainly aren't being taught. This problem is endemic in the US educational system -- reputed to be worse in California than almost anywhere else, even most of the Deep South -- and if my personal experience is any guide there are a few other countries that are in similar positions. Formal evaluation processes don't seem to do jack to keep the nitwits out. The only thing I've ever seen work is a self-selected review team with anonymous blackball authority and a few seriously cranky members. That, of course, has its own problems; but it does work, at least for a while. Cheers, - Michael