Errol writes, 1) why supporters of particular approaches to software development are talking past each other and not necessarily hearing what each other are saying?
I would hypothesize that it is because they do not understand each other. Computer scientists are trying to solve a very difficult problem, how to formalize the writing of software, without the background to deal with the fundamental cause of the problem. (I mean humans. Humans define what the software is to do, execute the creation of that software, and accept the result.) Because they are not given a formal education in the major issues (organizational behavior and related subjects) they must internalize the problem and recast it in terms they understand. The terms that one computer scientists uses and coins will most likely not match anyone else's. On top of this, consider that the computer science discipline is not a science in the same sense as psychology. What I mean is that computer scientists tend not to observe phenomena, hypothesize on relationships, and then perform experiments designed to support or refute the hypothesis. The result is that very intelligent people propose solutions to a very difficult problem using language and concepts unique to them and their experience. When describing this to others, the lack of a shared set of terms makes it difficult to share ideas or see the merits of other approaches. (Computer scientist B reads computer scientists A's paper and then tries to map the concepts there to his own understanding rather then a commonly shared set of terms. When they don't match communication breaks down.) After which, they perform no science to see if there method is truly beneficial versus other methods. Take for example the Data Flow paradigm. It has data and operators. The object oriented paradigm also has data and operators, but clumps them together and calls them objects. They are the same concepts with different packaging, either of which may or may not have benefits to the programmer or the program to be written. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
