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To me the point of the parable (apart from clever programming) seems to be that for a successful venture you need to have competent people on all fronts, manage
by andmarios 14y ago
To me the point of the parable (apart from clever programming) seems to be that for a successful venture you need to have competent people on all fronts, managers and engineers, good communication between teams and listen to your clients.
The manager did a good job to find a way to cut down the costs but didn't get the specifications right so the engineers, although they could deal with the issue, didn't even know that an issue existed.
I guess in the day, they didn't have UX designers.
As for the article's point, it probably is nor managers, nor engineers, nor mathematicians really get the point of the parable.
- larrydag 14y agoIn these sort of parables I tend to agree with W Edwards Deming in that the root of most problems is the managers. The goal should be to reduce variability in the process. Not being able to see any data I would guess that most of the variability in the data would be with the shunting.
- gsg 14y agoHmm, I read it at least partly as a riff on the idea of composition: the day is won by designing components with desirable properties out of lesser components which lack them. The parallel to programming seems obvious. Your reading works too.
- andmarios 14y agoGiven that the article was written by Dijkstra, your interpretation is probably closer to the truth than mine. I wonder though if this lesson has the same value nowadays as it had on its day. Maybe it is because of such lessons that this design procedure is common today.
- run4yourlives 14y agoThe point of the parable is that there is no such thing as a "simple, straightforward fix", because everything has consequences - anticipated or not.