Carlos Gershenson wrote:
Here we're swaying between measuring bloatware and measuring documentation, the dreaded Rubicon of the software programmer. Actually, automated documentation tools have improved. But a package where programmers hate documenting (or document in-line), or are busier adding features than doing documentation will be regarded as less progressive. Some software packages realistically have less need for intricate documentation. Also, improvements in software can be a more intuitive interface (decreasing needed documentation), improved speed, improved modularity, maintainibility, integratability, etc. This is true of Moore's Law as well - it's a very one-dimensional measure of computing progress. Many many people are more impressed with the ability to plug in their video camera to a PC rather than the ability of Excel to open 60% faster. We simply have little way to evaluate software progress across the board with a measure like Moore's Law. But if we examine tasks and explore speed, functionality and cost for handling tasks, we get some comparisons. Offshoring of software programming becomes easier because it's easier to turn some types of software into a commodity task. Other field-specific tasks are much more involved, and may become actually doable thanks to software progress, but still may be much slower tasks to do than trivial already-done-a-million-times tasks. But both types are necessary. |
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