Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!ihlpb!tainter
From: tainter@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Tainter)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Programming (was Register usage)
Message-ID: <10534@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Date: 25 May 89 15:17:35 GMT
References: <966@aber-cs.UUCP> <7040@cg-atla.UUCP> <1316@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: tainter@ihlpb.UUCP (55529-Tainter,J.A.)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 21

In article <1316@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <7040@cg-atla.UUCP>, morrison@cg-atla.UUCP (Steve Morrison) writes:
>> Software Enginerring back in the seventies: "The goal of Software
>> Engineering isn't to make good programmers better, it's to make
>> average programmers as productive as the best."

>This is utter nonsense.  It makes just as much sense to try to make
>an average baseball player a Babe Ruth, an average soccer player a Pele,
>or an average physics student an Einstein.
		^^^^^^^^^^^^^ shouldn't be student, ya know

Actually, there is a subtle modifier missing from the original statement:
"The goal of Software Engineering isn't to make good programmers better,
it's to make average programmers as productive as the best ARE CURRENTLY."
							   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The assumption is that the best will continue to get better, regardless.
The average

>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907

--johnathan.a.tainter--