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From: nabiel@erix.UUCP (Nabiel Elshiewy)
Newsgroups: net.general
Subject: Professional Programmers and Terminal Jockeys
Message-ID: <436@erix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-May-84 17:10:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: erix.436
Posted: Wed May 23 17:10:35 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 01:36:41 EDT
Organization: L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 43

 Sending this article on  net.general does  not mean  that it  belongs
 there. The  reason  is  that  I don't  really  know  which  group  is
 interested in the subject. I hope for response and appreciate guiding
 me to the right group.

 In ACM Software Engineering Notes, volume 6, number 2,  April 1981, a
 note titled *** PROFESSIONALIZING  PROGRAMMING *** was  written there
 signed by Philip Miller. The  note is reprinted  here (with  the hope
 that I am not violating any copy right regulations):



 >  "       I recently came across a Short Communication ("Why You
 >   Should  Not Time-Share",  Software  Practice and  Experience,
 >   April  79) explaining  some of  the  fallacies of  developing
 >   software interactively. Niklaus  Wirth has also written about
 >   the sloppiness that can result from being on-line.
 >
 >   Though a good interactive computing environment would seem to
 >   be  the  best  way  to  develop  software,  how  do  we  keep
 >   programmers from  falling  into extended  periods of  "trial-
 >   and-error"  debugging?  Dijkstra  once  wrote  that  programs
 >   should  be  composed   to  correctness,  not   debugged  into
 >   correctness. I  am interested in  opening a dialogue  on this
 >   topic: How  do we  make professional programmers  out of  the
 >   "terminal jockeys"?


 Peter G. Neumann, SEN's editor, comments  the note  by the  following
 statement:

 >   If you  give a slob programmer  more powerful tools,  he will
 >   most likely demonstrate that he is more of a slob than anyone
 >   previously realized. Perhaps this letter  should be captioned
 >   Horsing around with Programs: A Note that Rides the Jockeys.


 I share Miller his  interest and I  think that  the subject is  still
 interesting after three years from  publication. I also  believe that
 the right place for  such dialogue  is on  the  net. Most  of us  are
 PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMERS.
 
        Nabiel Elshiewy,   {phillabs, decvax} mcvax!enea!erix!nabiel