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It is indeed effective, and interesting. Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this. Even if it ri
by tacostakohashi 10y ago
It is indeed effective, and interesting.
Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this. Even if it ridiculous for both sides, it is indicative of a group of workers, and an employer, who have decided exactly what their job is (and is not), and what the rules and training pertaining to that job are.
Contrast with software development, which is a free-for-all - mainly for good, but the complete absence of standards or authorities doesn't always seem like a good thing. Just occasionally I find myself thinking that some baseline standards for, say, source control or testing would do everyone a world of good.
- tyingq 10y agoYou get to appreciate the idea more as you get older too. There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers.
- metaphor 10y ago>> There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers. What do you suspect those reasons may be? Also, what would you describe as latest greatest tech in the context of aerospace industry?
- kakarot 10y agoImagine if you weren't allowed to debug or write tests for your own code. Until we come to a mature understanding of the place that unions have in our working economy, I hope we never see this kind of bureaucracy form in our profession.
- umeshunni 10y agoWriting tests for your own code is a relatively recent phenomenon. When I worked at MSFT as a developer in the early 2000s, we had dedicated test developers who wrote tests. You wrote your code and checked it in after a code review and as long as it passed the integration tests, the test developers wrote their (what would now be called) unit tests and checked them in to make sure someone else didn't break your code. I think writing your own tests gained favor in the early/mid-2000s with the "extreme programming" and TDD movements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development)
- mseebach 10y agoExactly. If union rules had been written down, even in 2005, developers would be forbidden from writing, possibly even running, tests, lest they take away the jobs of the testers. Unit testing would in practice be illegal, never mind (gasp) DevOps.
- bigtimeidiot 10y ago>If union rules had been written down, even in 2005 What are "union rules"? Each union is free to bargain their demands collectively with the employer. If your members think such a rule is stupid, they won't demand it. But your lack of knowledge and disdain of unions is noted.
- flamedoge 10y agoEven running itself. That would actually mean seeing what you wrote. That would be bad. Takes away potential job creation opportunities.
- 10y ago
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago> Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this. There would never be a union so long as fully-qualified software engineers are in-demand - even the deluge of web-designers from the dot-com boom (and today's coding-camp graduates) haven't seen a rise in poor working conditions or unemployment because of the over-supply of labor. I do advocate some kind of professional certification or charter status for software-engineers involved in safety-critical systems - like how a certified civil engineer needs to sign-off on bridge and building designs - but that's largely for the public's benefit, not solely their own.