Wayne Allen's Weblog

I think there is an "Art and Craft" aspect to software and IMHO thats part of the attraction to it....

sure if we were just punching out standard bits you can get fairly cut-and-dry with that.

but when you need to build a system for real people to use you *HAVE TO* be able to step into the realm of Art and Craft and things like use of Color, screen layout and a number of other things that are hard to give sharp definitions for.... you can have general rules and guides but at some point you have to focus on who the user is and what will work best for that user / group / environment.

True, that the craftiness appeals to many developers.

But what is an example of cut and dry standard bits?

Developing TV's? Cars? There is a craftiness to each of these. But less so. And that is where the communication comes into play with the many more informalities. And it is not just color or layout... it's also "What does a user want to do with this purchase order?" There are formal things to do with it, but also informal.

I think software is informal all the way down to the bits on the wire. Only then does it become informal. TV's and cars stay pretty much the same with inflection points here and there (e.g. Tivo, HDTV's, hybrid cars).

Not sure I agree with your comparison. How is developing a TV different than developing software? They are both soft skills that require domain knowledge and user/customer input. Both have constraints of costs, infrastructure, market demands, etc. You can choose to be as formal or informal as you want for either product.

> what is it that we, the software development discipline, are envious of from the "other" engineering disciplines?

The fact that other engineering disciplines are based on physics instead of "a bunch of stuff some random guy decided was a good idea"?

God didn't create x86.

>The fact that other engineering disciplines are based on physics...

Physics is no more than thinking of a good idea and then doing experiments to see if you are wrong. How is that different than software?

Physics hasn't changed in the last bajillion years. How would building architects react if gravity changed every ten years? Or the fundamental properties of building materials were radically redesigned every five years?

And yet that's exactly what happens in software. I suppose it's the price of playing God in those little Universe Boxes on our desks.

>And yet that's exactly what happens in software.

Still I have to disagree. The fundamentals of the Turing Machine haven't changed since 1937. If you mean things like language syntax, frameworks and the like - then sure things have changed. But have you looked at the amount of new products comming out of materials science? Even "basic" things like framing materials are undergoing constant change.