Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!heberlei
From: heberlei@iris.ucdavis.edu (Todd)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <4273@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 10 May 89 22:20:06 GMT
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: heberlei@iris.ucdavis.edu (Todd)
Distribution: usa
Organization: U.C. Davis - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Lines: 53

[Jason's (from UCD) ranting and raving]

Whoa!  Jason, unless you are planning on working completely by
yourself for the rest of your life, you better learn to treat other
people with a little more respect.  Almost any project you work on
will require the cooperation of a number of people from different 
disciplines: tech writers, programmers, managers, engineers of all 
types, etc.  (Please note that this implies communication skills are
very important)

I did my undergraduate work in CS at UC Davis, have worked for our
Division of Computer Science for the past year, and will return next
year as a grad student in CS here at UC Davis (hey, I like it here :-)
I have also worked for our Physics Dept (and taken Physics
104,105,110) and our Engineering Dept., and I find Jason's statements
completely unfounded.  I hope everyone out in net-land realizes
Jason's views are his own; our Division of Computer Science is a great
place to be (we are nice people).

I agree to some extent with Jason's fear of money getting in they way
of "pure science."  When I was shopping for grad schools, I was
upset to see schools offering an MBA with their CS degrees.  However,
if you want to be a key component in a research organization, you do
need to have both good managerial and economic skills.  Also, if an
engineer does have a desire to make lots of money (nothing wrong with
that), he/she is going to have to be one of the better ones in their
field.  The result: they learn the material anyways. :-)

Enough dribble!
------------------- some thought to ponder on -----------------------

* We have been building bridges for a lot longer than we have been
programming computers.  Programming/SE is a trade in its infancy; maybe
after a few thousand years we will be doing things correctly the first
time.

* I recall hearing about lots of engineering flaws in complex systems
such as autos, planes, space shuttles, etc.  One of Edwards AFB's
primary goals was/is to debug new plane designs.  I think a
"prototype" really means they are trying to debug something. :-)
Debugging is not the sole property of software development.

* Since patching a program is easier than retooling a machine or
fixing a support in a tall building (short ones too :-), maybe we
software writers (and SEs) are less worried about getting something
perfectly right the first time.


Enough already.  Send complaints to /dev/null.

Todd Heberlein
heberlei@leek.ucdavis.edu	128.120.57.26
heberlei@iris.ucdavis.edu	128.120.57.20