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From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <4363@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 4 May 89 00:57:37 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM> <855@odyssey.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath)
Organization: The Cat Factory
Lines: 20

In article <855@odyssey.ATT.COM> gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman) writes:
}Thanks for your note.  Indeed, the programmers on my project probably
}don't spend more than 50% of their time testing and debugging.  It
}depends on where we stand in the development cycle.

Perhaps we have a semantic quibble here.  The usual figure quoted is a
system will spend ~70% of its life in maintenance mode.  Maintenance is
much more than debugging.  It includes enhancement and making the program
do what the customer wants it to do, after you've made it do what they
asked for it to do.

Given that, it's not unreasonable to expect most programmers to spend 70%
of their time maintaining existing software, as opposed to creating new
software from scratch.

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI                                                 Carborundum
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