Thus spake Nick Frost circa 16/02/09 03:01 PM: > because I felt it would be irresponsible of me to leave the job to a > recent college graduate (as occurred) who might not have had any > experience with Ruby (for example). > > [...] > IMHO, the needs, considerations, and > motivations of a sysadmin writing maintenance/monitoring/reporting > scripts vs. someone hired to write a custom webapp for an organization > are quite different. I said I'd never dare call myself a programmer > [...] > I think many of of [us?] are in a different league [...] those of you > [...] > Returning to Owen's point, I wish to educate myself away from the silo > mentality and approach as I hope doing so will improve my skills and > work and potentially open the door to more versatility for myself and > the people I'm serving in doing my job (supporting bioinformatics > research).
What you are talking about (re: avoiding irresponsibility and separation of sysadmin vs. application development) falls squarely under requirements determination and flowdown. It's true that sysadmins are different from app developers. And it's true that sysadmin work is different from programming. But those are fine distinctions within the work of building computer-based solutions that solve some problem. The larger umbrella you're looking for is systems engineering. The "silos" are there because everyone is self-centered and, for good reason, thinks more about their field of expertise than they do about others'. This is not all bad or all good. It's specialization and, as humans, it helps keep us at the top of the food chain. Everything you describe doing sounds like exactly the right way to think about and do it. The next trick is to transition from informal, intuitive requirements extraction, analysis, and satisfaction to more formal, repeatable, and communicable processes. Just remember to be skeptical when anyone tries to tell you that such engineering can be linear or acyclic. A strong indicator for linear thinking is the degree of conviction to some assertion. [grin] E.g. if someone tells you that language ABC is the best language for XYZ, then they're most likely a (naive) linear thinker and prize abstraction over concreteness. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
