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From: linda@rtech.rtech.com (Linda Mundy)
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Schedule and budget are secondary
Message-ID: <3827@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 16 Oct 89 19:12:05 GMT
References: <16168@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> <6693@hubcap.clemson.edu> <16187@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> <3807@rtech.rtech.com> <16198@vail.ICO.ISC.COM>
Reply-To: linda@rtech.UUCP (Linda Mundy)
Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
Lines: 40

In article <16198@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> sps@ico.ISC.COM (Steve Shapland) writes:
>In article <3807@rtech.rtech.com> linda@rtech.UUCP (Linda Mundy) writes:
>>In article <16187@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
>>>I know of no way to specify software requirements such as "must be able to
>>>survive the next five years of changes, to meet new needs, hacked in by
>>                                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>bored second-string maintenance programmers..."  ...
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>     .....  I personally think that
>>any new, just-out-of-school programmer should do maintenance work for awhile
>>(assuming, of course, that the company already has a product!)  It will
>>introduce them to the product they will be working on, in a context where they
>>can both learn and have something to show for it.  ...
>
>I agree with the policy of assigning rookie programmers to maintenance
>tasks.  The learning experience is wonderful.  Most companies I've
>worked for tend to follow this policy, and I believe that this is
>what leads to Dick's view of maintenance programmers.
>
Well a few people have pointed out the apparent contradiction of (a) wanting
maintenance to be respected and (b) assigning rookies to do it.  First, I
did not say nor mean to imply that *only* rookies should be doing maintenance,
just that *all* rookies should do some.  None of this "this guy's too smart to
'waste' his time doing maintenance".  In my experience, even smart programmers
benefit a *lot* by exposure to the problems that occur when software gets out
there in the real world -- they see first-hand that software may be used in
ways that are not foreseen; they experience the agony of trying to debug
something which has bad error handling/lack of tracing facilities/ etc...
Hopefully, they learn from this how to code defensively.  

[...Steve's other comments deleted for brevity...]
>
>Steve Shapland
>Interactive Systems Corp.


-- 
"Who are you to tell me to question authority?"

Linda Mundy	{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!linda