Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!think!redsox!campbell
From: campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <743@redsox.bsw.com>
Date: 3 May 89 12:50:34 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell)
Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Lines: 19

In article <854@odyssey.ATT.COM> gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman) writes:
-
-Real programmers spend 90% of their time debugging.  Computer science
-curricula ignore debugging, perhaps because it can never be reduced
-to a theory.  But debugging skills are what I would look for *first.*
-(By the way, I am using "software engineer" as synonymous with "programmer."

Nonsense.  "Software engineer" is not synonymous with "programmer".  One of
the differences between a software engineer and a programmer is that, while
a programmer probably does spend 90% of his time debugging, a software
engineer spends, maybe, 25% of his time debugging.  Furthermore, a programmer
thinks that spending 90% of his time debugging is perfectly natural, while a
software engineer knows that nearly all bugs are fundamentally preventable,
and that each bug in his code represents a personal failing, to be learned
from and avoided next time around.
-- 
Larry Campbell                          The Boston Software Works, Inc.
campbell@bsw.com                        120 Fulton Street
wjh12!redsox!campbell                   Boston, MA 02146