Genotypes and Phenotypes (Gunnar Peterson)

[saurwein at gmail.com (Andreas Saurwein Franci Gonçalves)]

2009/10/14 SC-L Reader Dave Aronson <secureCoding2dave at davearonson.com>

> Andreas Saurwein Franci Gon?alves <saurwein at gmail.com> wrote
> (rearranged into  correct order):
>
> > 2009/10/13 Bobby Miller <b.g.miller at gmail.com>
> > > The obvious difference is "parts".  In manufacturing, things are
> assembled
> > > from well-known, well-specified, tested parts.  Hmmm....
>
> > Thats the idea of libraries. Well known, well specified, well tested
> parts.
> > Well, whatever.
>
> Ideally, yes.  However, programmers love to reinvent the wheel.  It's
> MUCH easier, both to do and to get away with, in software than in
> hardware... and often necessary.
>
> Need a bolt of at least a given length and strength, less than a given
> diameter?  There are standard thread sizes, and people make bolts of
> most common threadings and lengths, for purchase at reasonable prices,
> at places easily found, and you can be fairly certain that any given
> one of them will do the job quite well.
>
> Need a function for your program?  If it's as common as a bolt, it's
> probably already built into the very language.  If it's nearly as
> common, maybe there's a fairly standard library for it... and if
> you're very lucky, it's not too buggy or brittle.  Otherwise, it's
> probably going to be much cheaper (which is all your management
> probably cares about) to just code the damn thing yourself, than to
> research who makes such a thing, which ones there are, who says which
> one is how reliable, which ones have licensing terms your company
> finds palatable, and justifying your choice to management.  Lord help
> you if it requires money, because then you have to justify it to a
> higher degree, get the beancounters involved, budgetary authority from
> possibly multiple layers of manglement, and spend the rest of your
> days filling out purchase orders.
>
> If you do wind up coding it yourself, is the company then going to
> make that piece of functionality available to the world separately,
> whether for profit or open source?  N times out of N+1, for very large
> values of N, no way!
>
> Will they at least make it available *internally*, so that *they*
> don't have to reinvent the wheel *next* time?  Again, N times out of
> N+1, for almost as large values of N, no.
>
> -Dave

Exactly thats the point. Going a bit further, for every piece of  hardware
engineering, there is almost always a legal, worldwide or at least national
standard to follow. This is inexistent in software.

As long as anybody with at least one healthy finger is allowed to write and
sell software, the current situation will not change.

Make software development an engineering discipline with all the rights
and obligations of other engineering sciences.

No more coding without a license. Point. This would change the landscape of
bits and bytes in a dramatic way. But it requires the support of the
governments worldwide.

My 2 cents (me too would have to get back to college and study some more,
although having 25+ years of software development experience)
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