Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!pucc!EGNILGES
From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Who builds tools?
Message-ID: <5052@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 26 Apr 88 17:07:20 GMT
References: <40335UH2@PSUVM> <321@uwslh.UUCP>
Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 33
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article


In article <40335UH2@PSUVM>, UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
 
>In the Mysthical Man-Month, Brooks describes the surgical-team model
>for programming projects, where one person is responsible for all of the
>code.  Of course, to make this possible, we have to offload as much
>work as possible from the "surgeon".  One way to do that is to give
>every a surgeon a ToolSmith, who builds tools for the surgeon so that
>he doesn't have to build them hirself.
 
 
In many projects, however, the lead person should be the tool smith.
We find in applications that the end user is often the best programmer
of her own application.  For example, I found working in Seattle on
a ship stability program that an Ocean Engineer with access to good
tools could do most of the application himself quite effectively; I
concentrated on the more systems oriented aspect of the work, viz., the
screen manager.
 
But programmers are themselves the end user of things like compilers
and debuggers.  They know what they need...just as Ocean Engineers
know what the master of a vessel needs (actually, the master herself
probably knows even better than the engineer, but that's a matter of
degree and a division of labor within ocean engineering that I am
not qualified to address).
 
Anyway, the fact that programmers know their tools explains why senior
people want to work on tools...it's the same phenomenon as the end-user
who wants to use Lotus 123 to do her own models.  It's more fun, and
a better product is often the result.  Yes, the user is paying for
real work, not toolcrafting; but if the real work is done several
orders of magnitude faster and more accurately because the team
members have good tools, the person paying the bill has no reason to
complain.