Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: "software engineers" -- case study (long)
Message-ID: <8398@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 7 May 89 05:58:11 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM> <1670001@hp-ptp.HP.COM>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 20

In article <1670001@hp-ptp.HP.COM> scottg@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Scott_Gulland) writes:

>>Real programmers spend 90% of their time debugging.  Computer science
>>curricula ignore debugging, perhaps because it can never be reduced

>I beg your pardon!  YOU may spend 90% of your time debugging, but no one
>I have known in the last ten years of software development has spent anything
>close to 90%.  Most engineers might spend at most 10% of thier time debugging.
>The vast majority of thier time is spent, developing internal and external
>documentation, design, coding, testing, and a wide variety of release related
>activities.


Interesting that everyone has continued to express the time as a percentage
of the total.  Might this mean the the debugging and testing time is
a constant and the "engineers" simply take longer to get the code written
in the first place? 


Les Mikesell