Re: Branch Connection.

Christopher Wright wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2005, at 12:52 AM, Paul Bowers wrote:
>
>>- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythical_man_month (someone needs to do
>>a
>>plant engineering version of this)
>
> This was done in 1975, when there was no such thing as CAD or FEA, and
> it's just as true today with all our technology. Too many people think
> that better tools automatically makes better work.

The last part of that webpage says:

<<Many software professionals have lamented the fact that 30 years after the book's first publication they are still working on projects whose managers are still making the mistakes that Brooks identifies. When challenged with this in 2004, Brooks stated with characteristic modest humour: "They call this book the Bible of Software Engineering... and that's because everybody reads it but nobody does anything about it!">>

I don't think there's any doubt that some really intelligent and talented people are creating sophisticated software, it's just that the downward flow of progress tends to make users less involved and innovative because, well, you know, "someone else has already figured it all out, so why bother?".

I've seen this type of attitude many times - people afraid to try something different/undocumented with software because it might "break" the program. Usually this happens with the high-buck software solutions where local CAD admins are spoon-fed fixes from their vendor.

Paul Received on Sun Sep 18 15:07:00 2005