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From: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Maintenance
Keywords: knowledge, expectations, fairness
Message-ID: <4909@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 89 18:22:35 GMT
References: <1337@accuvax.nwu.edu> <11064@cbnews.ATT.COM> <78584@linus.UUCP> <376@cherry5.UUCP> <614@alias.UUCP>
Reply-To: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 24

In article <614@alias.UUCP> mherman@alias.UUCP (Michael Herman) writes:

>I would wager that most car machanics have never seen an assembly line
>yet they still are very effective in what they do.  I would also wager
>that software maintainers don't have to be great developers.
>
>p.s. Let's avoid the discussion that mechanics would be better if they
>     had worked on an assembly line.  Its true.  In the same light,
>     a software maintainer would be better if they had development
>     experience.  My contention is that neither are strictly necessary.

Even under your restrictions, what you have stated is quite untrue for a
very large class of systems.  In these MCCR systems, most of the
'maintenance' effort is devoted to enhancing these long-lived systems, not
in removing design or production errors or in restoring the product to its
original performance.


Rich
-- 
We use kill ratios to measure how the war is going.
We use SLOC ratios to measure how our software is coming.
(Idea from Gary Seath)                                        rsd@sei.cmu.edu
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