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- From: kambic@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Bonus, Iniquus, Celer - Delegitus Duo)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.software-eng
- Subject: Re: Will we keep ignoring this productivity issue?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov20.104709.9322@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
- Date: 20 Nov 92 10:47:09 EST
- References: <1992Nov17.003350.2649@tcsi.com> <BxxoHu.Lpz@cs.uiuc.edu> <1992Nov19.112116.9307@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <By0G8A.1M5@cs.uiuc.edu>
- Lines: 35
-
- In article <By0G8A.1M5@cs.uiuc.edu>, johnson@cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson) writes:
- > kambic@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Bonus, Iniquus, Celer - Delegitus Duo) writes:
- > In response to a probably too long article on my part:
- >>We are in the world of wild conjecture and the
- >>nature vs. nuture issue could go on forever. We need to speak of data here.
- > Although there were probably many things wrong with my article, it was not
- > wild conjecture, and I was pointing to data. The claim was made that,
- > like everything else, excellence in programming was something you either
- > had or didn't have, and trying to train someone to be a top programmer
- > was a mistake. My point was that claim was completely rediculous.
- May have misread. Agree that we can and should try. Based on my experience,
- we are not successful yet.
- > It is true that there are very large differences in the skills of
- > programmers. It is also true that our theories of how to manage software
- > do not take account of this, and it should.
- Disagree. See Boehm, DeMarco, Weinberg for discussions.
- > Most differences are acquired,
- I am still not sure about the supporting evidence for this claim.
- [...]
- However, I think
- > that it is *possible* to come up with an effective theory of how to teach
- > software development, and that, given enough effort, we will eventually
- > do so.
- When I was in graduate school eons ago, this same question was being asked then
- of well known disciplines, and the answer at that time, that there was no
- standard theory (note: maybe somewhat different question - the issue IMHO is
- how we teach something to provide the most measurable difference in the skill
- level of the people using the discipline after as compared to before the
- teaching.)
-
- Thanks for the ref - will try to get.
-
- George Kambic
- sd
-
-