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Let's abandon the therapeutic frame for a minute. Is it possible that we really are frauds? It may just be the nature of programming projects that nobody unde

by neilk 15y ago

Let's abandon the therapeutic frame for a minute. Is it possible that we really are frauds? It may just be the nature of programming projects that nobody understands the full implications of what they are doing. And for the most part, what separates the successful from the unsuccessful is dumb luck. So maybe you really ARE courting disaster every day, and there's something like a 1/8 chance every year that you'll do something so horrible that your clients or investors will hate you forever. Look at the success rate of our industry. Let's set aside startups because that's widely acknowledged to be a field where much is unknown and unpredictable. Pity the non-technical CEO who just wants to computerize some filing system. It's common for 50% of these sort of routine corporate IT projects to fail. This is the thing we're supposedly good at. And yet they would never hire a plumber with a 50% disastrous track record. In fact, they probably would never expect somebody with a 50%-bad track record to even be able to stay solvent. But there are plenty of programmers or consulting firms out there with worse records than even that.

qntm 15y ago
Well, if we are, then this certainly isn't the only industry in which everybody is a fraud. Look at the people who make movies, or generate electricity, or trade stock, or grow corn. Look at the people who run our various countries. It's a really unnerving day when you realise that the whole thing is run by human beings.
kragen 15y ago
If it's just the nature of programming projects that nobody understands what they're doing, does that imply we're frauds? Research in general is like that: you can't know whether you're about to make a great discovery until after you've made it. If the CEO just wants to computerize some filing system, give her a copy of Filemaker Pro. Don't write something from scratch in Ruby.

by neilk 15y ago

qntm 15y ago

Well, if we are, then this certainly isn't the only industry in which everybody is a fraud. Look at the people who make movies, or generate electricity, or trade stock, or grow corn. Look at the people who run our various countries. It's a really unnerving day when you realise that the whole thing is run by human beings.

kragen 15y ago

If it's just the nature of programming projects that nobody understands what they're doing, does that imply we're frauds? Research in general is like that: you can't know whether you're about to make a great discovery until after you've made it. If the CEO just wants to computerize some filing system, give her a copy of Filemaker Pro. Don't write something from scratch in Ruby.