9 ms·

Hordes Of Novices

58 points by krisvage 13y ago

asgard1024 13y ago
I think he is basically arguing for a professional organization of programmers, which would give out certifications and (wink, wink) make sure their salaries won't get too low by limiting competition. (I don't necessarily disagree, just saying.)
wwkeyboard 13y ago
I love the idea of starting people on the path to learning how to build applications. However I think he brings up a good point, I can't find on the code academy website where it says "this is a start to long process of learning". appacademy goes as far as to say 12 weeks and you're in.
asparagui 13y ago
Hoard == a secret stash Horde == a large group
marcus_holmes 13y ago
yes, Uncle Bob, we do need hordes of novices. Because in the days of yore only monks and priests knew how to read and write, and that was bad. Getting everyone to read and write is good. 90% of what they write will be crap, but that's better than not having them write at all. Obviously they're not going to be writing commercial or critical systems. Learning to code helps people deal with technology, but it doesn't make them professional coders. Just like learning to write a shopping list is useful but doesn't make me a journalist. Opposing people learning things because what they might create with that knowledge is just wrong.
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  > Opposing people learning things because what they might create with that knowledge is just wrong He doesn't oppose people learning things. > Obviously they're not going to be writing commercial or critical systems. No. That's exactly what he's talking about. The trend to hire more people rather than better people. FTA: "Do we really need to keep on recruiting and training cannon fodder to throw at software projects? Or should we rethink this." Take a few minutes to read the article.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    I had a big project failed once because at the beginning out rockstar programmer/ninja/free electron (and he was a genuine one) threw a temper tantrum and said - I am bored of working with Microchip Pics (don't worry if you are young and don't know what that is) I want to use something more powerful - so we switched vendors, the stack to keep him satisfied. It went downhill. Sometimes you need mediocre guy for a non demanding job. A bored talented programmer can sink a project as good as incompetent one.
    - GVIrish 13y ago
      I think what you encountered is a different type of trap, the trap of the talented jerk. The guy/gal who is brilliant, so they're allowed to get away with a crappy and/or irrational attitude. Sometimes this works out well, but other times it'd be better to hire someone may not be of the same caliber skills-wise, but has a better attitude and is more pragmatic. Your coworker might not have been a true "jerk" per se, but he certainly sounded irrational.
  - marcus_holmes 13y ago
    I did... the point with people learning to code is precisely not that they're going to get hired to write code (that's what we professionals do). The current craze for teaching people to code that he references has (in my experience at least) got nothing to do with creating a horde of junior devs, but is to do with people waking up to the fact that they're effectively illiterate. I agree entirely that 9 women can't produce a baby in one month, and that hiring 20 random junior devs is not going to make a development task go faster than 5 experienced devs in a decently managed development team.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago
      > I did... the point with people learning to code is precisely not that they're going to get hired to write code (that's what we professionals do). So then I don't understand the point of your comment, because it's not a response to anything said in the original article. You are responding to Uncle Bob on an issue he does not bring up. Unless you are referring to the part about code academies, where he says: "These programs are attracting people to them, and employers, desperate to add developers, are hiring them." Which flies in the face of what you say in this comment. So, I don't understand. What are you responding to? Maybe you misunderstood the premise?
onion2k 13y ago
The overwhelming majority of bespoke software is a CRUD app in disguise (to a lesser or greater extent). You don't need to be an expert to develop things like that - a basic knowledge data structures, connecting to a database, and some UI and off you go. That isn't going to change. So I would argue that yes, we need the horde. We need more of the people at the "bottom" doing the boring stuff than we need at the top doing the hard stuff.
- asgard1024 13y ago
  > We need more of the people at the "bottom" doing the boring stuff than we need at the top doing the hard stuff. I disagree with that premise. In software, it's all virtual. It can be copied easily. So why there should be boring work at all? I mean, in building houses, sure, one has to go out and actually lay the bricks. But in software? So why we can't write the CRUD app just once (or twice perhaps, so we wouldn't have a monoculture) and be done with it, work on something more interesting? In my view, if you're in software doing boring work, you're doing something wrong. Doesn't mean you cannot get a nice paycheck for that, though. :-)
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  I don't know about "overwhelming majority," but yes, there is a very large slice of software that is essentially CRUD. In my recent experience, though, it's almost always attached to, part of, or feeding into or off of something else, whether that's a CMS, API's, satellite sites, or some sort of proprietary custom plumbing. Many things can be done by novices, and the limited supply of experts means they can't do everything. But for many projects, that boring stuff at the bottom handles the data that's vital to everything else, and it's vital to be careful when using novices to work on the lifeblood of your business. Without careful management, you'd better hope they randomly fail to introduce any serious design flaws or security issues given only "basic knowledge data structures, connecting to a database, and some UI."
henrik_w 13y ago
The problem with mentoring programmers is: who is a good mentor? Looking back at when I started coding, very few of the senior people there would not have been good mentors. They simply weren't good enough. They would have taught me the wrong things. Also, of course we need more good developers. The problem is that there aren't enough good people to be found (this is not a problem of too few places where you learn to code). Plus, the demand for more software seems pretty limitless.
- scrabble 13y ago
  Yes. There's also difficulty in finding mentors. There are sites that pop up claiming to offer software mentorship, but most seem to be just people who are willing to help you with an issue you're having with your code. That is not a good mentor-protege relationship.
  - xradionut 13y ago
    There's also a problem finding decent students/coworkers that listen. I don't know how many times I've made suggestions and recommendations, just to be ignored. I co-lead a local programming user group and we commonly help people. Frequently we encounter people that want us to fix the bug in one line of code and don't want help in fixing the structure, the function, the readability or overall program.
    - henrik_w 13y ago
      Exactly. Not enough developers care enough to be either good mentors or good mentees.
skaplun 13y ago
I believe there will be as many commercially created sites in the not so distant future as there will be houses. programmers are the house builders of tomorrow, and they are needy, creating more jobs than the average bricklayer, so they drag a few non-educated along for the ride with them. All in all a boon for all involved.
ds9 13y ago
He makes a good point that one more competent developer is much more valuable than multiple incompetent devs. The first part of the piece, about how much software is needed and for how many uses, suggests another point he does not make -- namely that there is a lot of redundancy. In the universe of softare, how many independently developed, duplicative solutions to essentially the same functionality, code pattern or use case are there? Probably quite a lot, right? The efforts of the limited number of good devs societies have on tap, obviously would go a lot further if there were more re-use and sharing. I know I'm an idealistic outlier in believing software should never have been deemed copyrightable, but the more we go in the "Free" direction - with GPL/BSD type licences and such - the better off we'll all be, in a macro view.
scrabble 13y ago
It should be clear that what we need is more software developers, but people who are able to quickly rise above the level of novice. Generally this is what the interview process is meant to weed out.
zdw 13y ago
I tend to view people who know the extreme basics of programming as tinkerers or "power users", not as miniature Fabrice Bellards. I'd rather have a bunch of curious people who want to try their hand at some light automation than people who freak out when anything minor changes.
kadabra9 13y ago
> Is our industry doing the equivalent of offering free rides to hopeful software developers, calling them pilots, and throwing them by the thousands into airplanes just to watch them crash and burn? The evidence is pretty compelling. There's a lot of crashing and burning out there. Is that because nobody is signing the log? No, it's because some companies do a really bad job of interviewing and hiring developers. This could be for a few reasons: 1. Companies are so hungry to attract developers they make an offer to the first candidate that seems remotely competent, only to see him/her struggle when they get out of the bootcamp and into the trenches of day to day work. 2. Companies have clueless people interviewing candidates for technical positions, and just do a bad job evaluating them. For all of those "novices" that these bootcamps and such produce, some will go on to fizzle out, but my guess is some of them are actually talented/hard working enough to stick with it and evolve into competent developers. At the end of the day, it's still the responsibility of the company doing the hiring to determine which is which. The need for developers is only going to increase... so yes, we do need those hordes of novices, but with that need comes an increased responsibility to focus your hiring/recruiting efforts.
- xradionut 13y ago
  No it's because the industry and schools do a bad job of training novice programmers.
- kasey_junk 13y ago
  I think people underestimate how hard it is to find good developers. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, experimenting with hiring processes, and hiring yet I still wouldn't trust my success rate very much. The issue is that we don't have any objective measures as to what makes good software. This means that everything we do in the hiring space is subjective, which makes it really difficult to do rigorous study/improvement on. That said, novice programmers even excellent ones are exponentially less valuable than experienced ones. But, the ratio of good developer to bad seems constant across experience levels. In my mind the 2 biggest issues in finding good developers are: 1) the cost of novice developers. The market has driven demand so high that it is too costly to experiment/mentor young developers knowing that they will (and probably should) only provide 2 years of valuable work (1 year of uselessness and 2 of value in a 3 year hire). 2) the senseless ageism in our industry. The idea that older developers are somehow inflexible or out of touch just doesn't gel with my personal experience. The older developers who are still out developing are doing it because they enjoy it and keep up with new technology. If they didn't they would have left the profession a long time ago. Unfortunately, this has led me to a policy of hiring a few more experienced developers instead of a more healthy mix of novice/experience. I know that makes me part of the problem but I can't afford to be otherwise.
ebbv 13y ago
"Get off my lawn you damn kids!" Today's novice is tomorrow's expert. No matter how much of an expert you think you are, you are a novice to someone else. If we go back and look at your code from X years ago (or even last week), are you going to be comfortable or are you going to squirm a little and want to make excuses for certain things? Bad code making it into production and causing problems for users is not the fault of the novice developer, it's the fault of their team lead/manager. Who shouldn't be a novice. If they are then that's an organizational problem, and not one caused by the mere existence of novices.
mildtrepidation 13y ago
If one doctor can transplant a heart in ten hours, can ten nurses transplant that heart in one hour? Can a hundred nursing assistants transplant that heart in six minutes? Can six hundred hospital receptionists transplant that heart in one minute? All of the people involved have useful and important skills, but they are not appropriate or relevant for the operation in question. My only change here would have been to swap receptionists out for interns: The skills are still relevant, but the experience is not there and the expectation is still unreasonable. No, development is not surgery (certainly not brain surgery, and usually not heart surgery). But it is often complex work that requires not just an understanding of what to do, but also how to do it, why to do it that way, what alternatives are available and how they might benefit the work in the future, how requirements tend to change, the difference between what clients/bosses say and what clients/bosses mean... It's vital that we have new developers. But the point of having new developers is that they become experienced developers; a swarm of n00bs is not, in and of itself, valuable. Treating it as such is dangerous, as many, many rescue projects painfully illustrate.
caseyamcl 13y ago
There is a definite argument to made for putting in-place more rigorous standards for developer education. My wife is a nurse, and there are very strict standards for getting a nursing license and graduating with a BSN degree. After all, she deals with human lives, and mistakes could be deadly. I believe such systems help ensure consistent behavior, and I agree that such a thing might be useful in certain areas of the developer world. However, we have to be careful, because a big part of software development involves inspiration and creative work. If people aren't interested and encouraged to pursue development as a hobby or career path, where will the masters of the future come from? Think of the amateur, but not so great, photographer hobbyist who grows up to become a legend in their field. I also have to disagree with Uncle Bob on the use of the term "hordes" to describe "many people interested in a craft". The negative connotation is indicative of the kind of snobbery that people as the top of their field may be entitled to, but certainly doesn't win people over when trying to make a convincing argument. It smacks of somebody looking down from the Ivory Tower of Enlightenment and sneering at the ignorance of the perceived mobs below...
azurelogic 13y ago
While I enjoyed and partly agreed with Uncle Bob's equivalent of "Get off my lawn", it would be excellent if he also proposed something that resembled a solution to the problem. I struggled at my first dev job because school only taught me the basics, not modern full-stack agile software engineering. I worked with a team that had everything from testing to deployment polished and near perfect. However, some of them gave me a chance, and today, I suck a lot less at writing good, clean, tested code. Our industry will need to continue to do things like that if we hope to improve over time. Otherwise, history will just repeat itself.
- memracom 13y ago
  One of the problems with software engineering training is that few schools take the "engineering" part seriously. Instead they train programmers or software developers. If engineering was taken more seriously then they would teach SWEBOK and SEMAT along with coding. Of course, many schools would argue that software engineering is a young profession and that SWEBOK and SEMAT are not yet fully formed. But nevertheless we do have people that are trying to apply some engineering rigor to the process of developing software and there is something there for all of us to learn, even if these things take another decade or two to become fully formed.
dbecker 13y ago
Is our industry doing the equivalent of offering free rides to hopeful software developers, calling them pilots, and throwing them by the thousands into airplanes just to watch them crash and burn? With some exceptions, it's less dangerous when a novice programmer writes ugly code than when a pilot crashes a plane. So we shouldn't require as much caution around letting people program as we do in letting them fly an airplane.
- normloman 13y ago
  Just don't let them program air traffic control software.
  - herge 13y ago
    Or medical imaging devices.
    - ecopoesis 13y ago
      Or let them handle website security
      - Profpatsch 13y ago
        Holy crap. Or write Sony’s user management. Or Adobe’s. Or …
      - chiph 13y ago
        Or anything related to large amounts of money
      - aestra 13y ago
        Or any automobile software.
- aestra 13y ago
  http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2005/11/69355?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2005/11/69355?cu... 1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history. 1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable. What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured. June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing. First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch. November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy. Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five. The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure. At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder. also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Military http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Military The software error of a MIM-104 Patriot, caused its system clock to drift by one third of a second over a period of one hundred hours – resulting in failure to locate and intercept an incoming missile. The Iraqi missile impacted in a military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (February 25, 1991), killing 28 Americans. A Chinook crash on Mull of Kintyre in June 1994. A Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, killing 29. This was initially dismissed as pilot error, but an investigation by Computer Weekly uncovered sufficient evidence to convince a House of Lords inquiry that it may have been caused by a software bug in the aircraft's engine control computer. In April 1992 the first F-22 Raptor crashed while landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The cause of the crash was found to be a flight control software error that failed to prevent a pilot-induced oscillation. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183580/Epic_failures_11_infamous_software_bugs?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=6 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183580/Epic_failures... Osprey aircraft crash Two weeks before Christmas in 2000, a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey, a hybrid airplane and helicopter, suffered a hydraulic system fault that should have been remedied without loss of life. A hydraulic line broke in one of the two engine cases as the Osprey was shifting from airplane to helicopter mode for landing. According to the Marine Corps major general who presented reports during the investigation of the incident, the trouble was "compounded by a computer software anomaly." The flight-control computer stopped the rotation of the engine pods when it detected the hydraulic failure. The pilots went through the normal procedure and pressed the primary reset button to re-engage the pods. At this point, both prop rotors went through "significant pitch and thrust changes," which led to a stall. The plane crashed into a marsh and killed all four Marines onboard.
deleted 13y ago
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noonespecial 13y ago
If one doctor can transplant a heart in ten hours, can ten nurses transplant that heart in one hour? Can a hundred nursing assistants transplant that heart in six minutes? Can six hundred hospital receptionists transplant that heart in one minute? The real question is: Could the doctor do the transplant without any nurses? Could the nurses help the doctor without the receptionists?
- bjornsing 13y ago
  I agree very much. All honest work is honorable work and it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. But I also think the organizational distinction between receptionists, nurses and doctors is helpful in making a hospital function. I must admit I sometimes feel that missing in the software industry. Given time we tend to organize into functional units where people know who's good at what and how to contribute, but it's sort of like if everybody was hired into a hospital with the same job description and then had to informally hash out who should play doctor and who should be the receptionist...
- robin2 13y ago
  If I wanted to be pedantic I'd say that you'd really want a heart transplant done by a surgeon, not a doctor... That said, I think the real questions is: who is Robert Martin, self-described uber-hacker, that his opinions should be taken so seriously? What has he written?
  - Profpatsch 13y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil_Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil_Martin He’s the head of the agile movement.
    - Nimi 13y ago
      AFAIK, not the head, but one of the founders - one of the signatories of the agile manifesto back in 2000: http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/
  - 13y ago
xacaxulu 13y ago
Don't hire and mentor a newbie or a graduate of a coding school, just hire a master coder+pilot. Perhaps the consultancy team at 8th Light could pick up your project for thousands of dollars a day...
mathattack 13y ago
IMHO... You can't get a crew of experienced software engineers without starting with hordes of novices. It's just not a field where you can say, "Pass the entrance exam, get some mentoring, and come back in 6 years with experience." It's a field that you need to explore and find if you have the passion. (And I hate the word passion) So it might take 20 novices coming out of these feeders to find 10 who become decent junior programmers, to get 5 who stick it out to become decent intermediate programmers, to get 1 who becomes a rock star. But is this so bad? What's the downside? Everyone who falls off along the way becomes someone with tools to make themselves more productive in whatever they do in life. And what's the alternative?
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  > And what's the alternative? I think the author gives an alternative in the form of his pilot training; intense training before being allowed to write code (= a proper and full education, instead of a course), and pair programming (= co-pilot) with an experienced or non-novice pilot (developer). The big corporate world doesn't tend to agree with this though, two people doing one job seems like a waste of money and time to a lot of managers that don't know any better.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Do you think this is the solution? Would it work in any environment? Start-up for instance? One could argue that training a programmer should be like training a doctor - once you get over the initial hurdle of getting into Medical school, it's all about a long period of learning and mentorship. My impression is that great programmers can come from unlikely sources. It's ok to cast a wider net for people, when the worst thing that happens is that they're more skilled for their efforts.
sailfast 13y ago
As a relative "novice" compared to the author, I welcome the suggestion that more formalized mentorship and "sign-off" by someone with experience would improve programming. Sorry I can't do your apprenticeship program. I see what you did there. Up scope! http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship The problem is that this cannot be implemented at scale, and certainly will not respond to demand. One may not have the opportunity to find in person mentors, but instead have the internet and a problem to solve. You have to navigate through on your own to find the people that do it right, and you may latch on to the wrong people! On the hiring side - for critical systems with a profit incentive and high potential, (or for a company with a unique mission that entices developers) you can afford to find and hire the bard. For other tasks, something is better than nothing so you get mediocre code. (there is still a HUGE market out there for that small something for small to medium businesses). For outlying scenarios where markets have become imbalanced by regulation or law (such as government contracting) you get incentives to put butts in seats regardless of experience as long as they meet the criteria. (Java cert = signed pilot's card right?) Certification is hard to get right, as is mastery. I applaud you for creating an environment to provide guidance and make mistakes and would welcome a larger scale effort to do so.
leetreveil 13y ago
Press the G key while you're on the website and you'll see their layout grid. EDIT: it's this: https://github.com/dotjay/hashgrid https://github.com/dotjay/hashgrid
edw519 13y ago
This discussion reminds me of Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the High Notes": http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html Instead of debating with every other PHB, PM/BA, or clueless customer, I have them read this first. It's fundamental for understanding how to use high achievers to get things done. (Love this part: "Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years.")
al2o3cr 13y ago
A question not asked by the piece: is what we do really "heart transplants" and Shakespearean plays? Sure, that surgeon can do the transplant like nobody else and ol' Bill can write a play like nobody else, but what if all the client actually needed was a bandaid or a quip for a greeting card?
lmm 13y ago
Have you ever worked at a job where a guy who learned to program 20 years ago has to sign off on everything you do? I did, and it was awful. I've also worked at a place that hired nothing but fresh graduates, and that... actually turned out pretty well. There were cases where they wrote more code when they needed to, or used an unsafe construct when there was a better alternative... but they were willing to reason about things, to experiment, rather than just "this is how we do it". I'll take an untrained grad over someone who rigidly follows procedures any day.
websitescenes 13y ago
This article is ridiculous. Someone needs to program the software obviously.
programminggeek 13y ago
It is probably worth noting that Uncle Bob doesn't seem to be implying that the pilot training model is exactly the model that we should use. His point if you read a bunch of his stuff is that as a profession, we should look beyond our own borders to learn lessons from doctors, accountants, lawyers, pilots, engineers, architects, etc. to advance the level of professionalism in our profession. If software is going to make the world a better place ideas like "move fast and break things" probably isn't going to end up being a net benefit overall, especially for important, life or security critical software. If we pile in a bunch of novices without proper training and hand them projects that involve account security, personal information, etc. we are going to keep hearing about major security breaches, password hacks, etc. The more that the software industry has major catastrophic failures costing millions/billions of dollars, the more likely that we get regulated.
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  And yet, go our own way too. Software is (or used to be built) like other engineering professions; big design up front, then build (and often have the actual construction done by relatively low-wage workers). Software's much more complicated though.
allworknoplay 13y ago
You're completely right, it would be much better if they all went into finance or management. There's no place for people trying to learn real skills.
memracom 13y ago
As the guy who formulated SOLID principles, co-created the Agile manifesto, and formulated the red-green-refactor process of doing TDD, I'd say that we should listen to what he has to say. Why do we keep training programmers in university to bang out low-level unstructured code? We know better and some schools like MIT with SICP have been following a different approach, but why is this not more widespread? Java is a horrible language to teach to new developers because it has traps all over the place that are best avoided. If a course started with DDD for a month before the first line of code is written, then perhaps Java would be OK. I'd still like to see all developers learn some machine coding and assembler but that should be something that you leave to 2nd or 3rd year after you have a grounding in how to structure programs.
dsego 13y ago
Should we have associations, guilds, licensing?
- unclebobmartin 13y ago
  I would vote for associations and guilds. I'm not a fan of licensing. I don't think we know enough to license people.
mattdeboard 13y ago
I wonder about the thought process that spawns articles like these. I'm a novice but I think I do pretty well for myself. I also didn't write my first line of code when I was very young. I didn't get any thrills or anything from programming until I started in my 30s. Obviously you need hordes of novices. What a preposterous, pretentious thing to say. It's the ultimate "first world problem" of career fields. "We have too many people who want to do this job because the pay is so good, career outlook is so bright, and job satisfaction is so high!" Yes you'll probably have to work much harder on a good noise filter when hiring, and you will probably have to be ok with taking a chance on hiring "newbs", hoping to get a great one who trains up well. This is a really geeky rant, and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it as in totally socially tone deaf. It's like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons wrote this. I know the author is a well-known guy in the software world but that doesn't change my opinion at all.
unclebobmartin 13y ago
Does anybody here think that healthcare.gov was put together by experts? Or was it more likely a horde of novices?

58 points by krisvage 13y ago

I think he is basically arguing for a professional organization of programmers, which would give out certifications and (wink, wink) make sure their salaries won't get too low by limiting competition. (I don't necessarily disagree, just saying.)

wwkeyboard 13y ago

I love the idea of starting people on the path to learning how to build applications. However I think he brings up a good point, I can't find on the code academy website where it says "this is a start to long process of learning". appacademy goes as far as to say 12 weeks and you're in.

asparagui 13y ago

Hoard == a secret stash Horde == a large group

marcus_holmes 13y ago

yes, Uncle Bob, we do need hordes of novices. Because in the days of yore only monks and priests knew how to read and write, and that was bad. Getting everyone to read and write is good. 90% of what they write will be crap, but that's better than not having them write at all. Obviously they're not going to be writing commercial or critical systems. Learning to code helps people deal with technology, but it doesn't make them professional coders. Just like learning to write a shopping list is useful but doesn't make me a journalist. Opposing people learning things because what they might create with that knowledge is just wrong.

jasonlotito 13y ago
> Opposing people learning things because what they might create with that knowledge is just wrong He doesn't oppose people learning things. > Obviously they're not going to be writing commercial or critical systems. No. That's exactly what he's talking about. The trend to hire more people rather than better people. FTA: "Do we really need to keep on recruiting and training cannon fodder to throw at software projects? Or should we rethink this." Take a few minutes to read the article.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  I had a big project failed once because at the beginning out rockstar programmer/ninja/free electron (and he was a genuine one) threw a temper tantrum and said - I am bored of working with Microchip Pics (don't worry if you are young and don't know what that is) I want to use something more powerful - so we switched vendors, the stack to keep him satisfied. It went downhill. Sometimes you need mediocre guy for a non demanding job. A bored talented programmer can sink a project as good as incompetent one.
  - GVIrish 13y ago
    I think what you encountered is a different type of trap, the trap of the talented jerk. The guy/gal who is brilliant, so they're allowed to get away with a crappy and/or irrational attitude. Sometimes this works out well, but other times it'd be better to hire someone may not be of the same caliber skills-wise, but has a better attitude and is more pragmatic. Your coworker might not have been a true "jerk" per se, but he certainly sounded irrational.
- marcus_holmes 13y ago
  I did... the point with people learning to code is precisely not that they're going to get hired to write code (that's what we professionals do). The current craze for teaching people to code that he references has (in my experience at least) got nothing to do with creating a horde of junior devs, but is to do with people waking up to the fact that they're effectively illiterate. I agree entirely that 9 women can't produce a baby in one month, and that hiring 20 random junior devs is not going to make a development task go faster than 5 experienced devs in a decently managed development team.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    > I did... the point with people learning to code is precisely not that they're going to get hired to write code (that's what we professionals do). So then I don't understand the point of your comment, because it's not a response to anything said in the original article. You are responding to Uncle Bob on an issue he does not bring up. Unless you are referring to the part about code academies, where he says: "These programs are attracting people to them, and employers, desperate to add developers, are hiring them." Which flies in the face of what you say in this comment. So, I don't understand. What are you responding to? Maybe you misunderstood the premise?

onion2k 13y ago

The overwhelming majority of bespoke software is a CRUD app in disguise (to a lesser or greater extent). You don't need to be an expert to develop things like that - a basic knowledge data structures, connecting to a database, and some UI and off you go. That isn't going to change. So I would argue that yes, we need the horde. We need more of the people at the "bottom" doing the boring stuff than we need at the top doing the hard stuff.

asgard1024 13y ago
> We need more of the people at the "bottom" doing the boring stuff than we need at the top doing the hard stuff. I disagree with that premise. In software, it's all virtual. It can be copied easily. So why there should be boring work at all? I mean, in building houses, sure, one has to go out and actually lay the bricks. But in software? So why we can't write the CRUD app just once (or twice perhaps, so we wouldn't have a monoculture) and be done with it, work on something more interesting? In my view, if you're in software doing boring work, you're doing something wrong. Doesn't mean you cannot get a nice paycheck for that, though. :-)
mildtrepidation 13y ago
I don't know about "overwhelming majority," but yes, there is a very large slice of software that is essentially CRUD. In my recent experience, though, it's almost always attached to, part of, or feeding into or off of something else, whether that's a CMS, API's, satellite sites, or some sort of proprietary custom plumbing. Many things can be done by novices, and the limited supply of experts means they can't do everything. But for many projects, that boring stuff at the bottom handles the data that's vital to everything else, and it's vital to be careful when using novices to work on the lifeblood of your business. Without careful management, you'd better hope they randomly fail to introduce any serious design flaws or security issues given only "basic knowledge data structures, connecting to a database, and some UI."

henrik_w 13y ago

The problem with mentoring programmers is: who is a good mentor? Looking back at when I started coding, very few of the senior people there would not have been good mentors. They simply weren't good enough. They would have taught me the wrong things. Also, of course we need more good developers. The problem is that there aren't enough good people to be found (this is not a problem of too few places where you learn to code). Plus, the demand for more software seems pretty limitless.

scrabble 13y ago
Yes. There's also difficulty in finding mentors. There are sites that pop up claiming to offer software mentorship, but most seem to be just people who are willing to help you with an issue you're having with your code. That is not a good mentor-protege relationship.
- xradionut 13y ago
  There's also a problem finding decent students/coworkers that listen. I don't know how many times I've made suggestions and recommendations, just to be ignored. I co-lead a local programming user group and we commonly help people. Frequently we encounter people that want us to fix the bug in one line of code and don't want help in fixing the structure, the function, the readability or overall program.
  - henrik_w 13y ago
    Exactly. Not enough developers care enough to be either good mentors or good mentees.

skaplun 13y ago

I believe there will be as many commercially created sites in the not so distant future as there will be houses. programmers are the house builders of tomorrow, and they are needy, creating more jobs than the average bricklayer, so they drag a few non-educated along for the ride with them. All in all a boon for all involved.

ds9 13y ago

He makes a good point that one more competent developer is much more valuable than multiple incompetent devs. The first part of the piece, about how much software is needed and for how many uses, suggests another point he does not make -- namely that there is a lot of redundancy. In the universe of softare, how many independently developed, duplicative solutions to essentially the same functionality, code pattern or use case are there? Probably quite a lot, right? The efforts of the limited number of good devs societies have on tap, obviously would go a lot further if there were more re-use and sharing. I know I'm an idealistic outlier in believing software should never have been deemed copyrightable, but the more we go in the "Free" direction - with GPL/BSD type licences and such - the better off we'll all be, in a macro view.

scrabble 13y ago

It should be clear that what we need is more software developers, but people who are able to quickly rise above the level of novice. Generally this is what the interview process is meant to weed out.

zdw 13y ago

I tend to view people who know the extreme basics of programming as tinkerers or "power users", not as miniature Fabrice Bellards. I'd rather have a bunch of curious people who want to try their hand at some light automation than people who freak out when anything minor changes.

kadabra9 13y ago

> Is our industry doing the equivalent of offering free rides to hopeful software developers, calling them pilots, and throwing them by the thousands into airplanes just to watch them crash and burn? The evidence is pretty compelling. There's a lot of crashing and burning out there. Is that because nobody is signing the log? No, it's because some companies do a really bad job of interviewing and hiring developers. This could be for a few reasons: 1. Companies are so hungry to attract developers they make an offer to the first candidate that seems remotely competent, only to see him/her struggle when they get out of the bootcamp and into the trenches of day to day work. 2. Companies have clueless people interviewing candidates for technical positions, and just do a bad job evaluating them. For all of those "novices" that these bootcamps and such produce, some will go on to fizzle out, but my guess is some of them are actually talented/hard working enough to stick with it and evolve into competent developers. At the end of the day, it's still the responsibility of the company doing the hiring to determine which is which. The need for developers is only going to increase... so yes, we do need those hordes of novices, but with that need comes an increased responsibility to focus your hiring/recruiting efforts.

xradionut 13y ago
No it's because the industry and schools do a bad job of training novice programmers.
kasey_junk 13y ago
I think people underestimate how hard it is to find good developers. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, experimenting with hiring processes, and hiring yet I still wouldn't trust my success rate very much. The issue is that we don't have any objective measures as to what makes good software. This means that everything we do in the hiring space is subjective, which makes it really difficult to do rigorous study/improvement on. That said, novice programmers even excellent ones are exponentially less valuable than experienced ones. But, the ratio of good developer to bad seems constant across experience levels. In my mind the 2 biggest issues in finding good developers are: 1) the cost of novice developers. The market has driven demand so high that it is too costly to experiment/mentor young developers knowing that they will (and probably should) only provide 2 years of valuable work (1 year of uselessness and 2 of value in a 3 year hire). 2) the senseless ageism in our industry. The idea that older developers are somehow inflexible or out of touch just doesn't gel with my personal experience. The older developers who are still out developing are doing it because they enjoy it and keep up with new technology. If they didn't they would have left the profession a long time ago. Unfortunately, this has led me to a policy of hiring a few more experienced developers instead of a more healthy mix of novice/experience. I know that makes me part of the problem but I can't afford to be otherwise.

ebbv 13y ago

"Get off my lawn you damn kids!" Today's novice is tomorrow's expert. No matter how much of an expert you think you are, you are a novice to someone else. If we go back and look at your code from X years ago (or even last week), are you going to be comfortable or are you going to squirm a little and want to make excuses for certain things? Bad code making it into production and causing problems for users is not the fault of the novice developer, it's the fault of their team lead/manager. Who shouldn't be a novice. If they are then that's an organizational problem, and not one caused by the mere existence of novices.

mildtrepidation 13y ago

If one doctor can transplant a heart in ten hours, can ten nurses transplant that heart in one hour? Can a hundred nursing assistants transplant that heart in six minutes? Can six hundred hospital receptionists transplant that heart in one minute? All of the people involved have useful and important skills, but they are not appropriate or relevant for the operation in question. My only change here would have been to swap receptionists out for interns: The skills are still relevant, but the experience is not there and the expectation is still unreasonable. No, development is not surgery (certainly not brain surgery, and usually not heart surgery). But it is often complex work that requires not just an understanding of what to do, but also how to do it, why to do it that way, what alternatives are available and how they might benefit the work in the future, how requirements tend to change, the difference between what clients/bosses say and what clients/bosses mean... It's vital that we have new developers. But the point of having new developers is that they become experienced developers; a swarm of n00bs is not, in and of itself, valuable. Treating it as such is dangerous, as many, many rescue projects painfully illustrate.

caseyamcl 13y ago

There is a definite argument to made for putting in-place more rigorous standards for developer education. My wife is a nurse, and there are very strict standards for getting a nursing license and graduating with a BSN degree. After all, she deals with human lives, and mistakes could be deadly. I believe such systems help ensure consistent behavior, and I agree that such a thing might be useful in certain areas of the developer world. However, we have to be careful, because a big part of software development involves inspiration and creative work. If people aren't interested and encouraged to pursue development as a hobby or career path, where will the masters of the future come from? Think of the amateur, but not so great, photographer hobbyist who grows up to become a legend in their field. I also have to disagree with Uncle Bob on the use of the term "hordes" to describe "many people interested in a craft". The negative connotation is indicative of the kind of snobbery that people as the top of their field may be entitled to, but certainly doesn't win people over when trying to make a convincing argument. It smacks of somebody looking down from the Ivory Tower of Enlightenment and sneering at the ignorance of the perceived mobs below...

azurelogic 13y ago

While I enjoyed and partly agreed with Uncle Bob's equivalent of "Get off my lawn", it would be excellent if he also proposed something that resembled a solution to the problem. I struggled at my first dev job because school only taught me the basics, not modern full-stack agile software engineering. I worked with a team that had everything from testing to deployment polished and near perfect. However, some of them gave me a chance, and today, I suck a lot less at writing good, clean, tested code. Our industry will need to continue to do things like that if we hope to improve over time. Otherwise, history will just repeat itself.

memracom 13y ago
One of the problems with software engineering training is that few schools take the "engineering" part seriously. Instead they train programmers or software developers. If engineering was taken more seriously then they would teach SWEBOK and SEMAT along with coding. Of course, many schools would argue that software engineering is a young profession and that SWEBOK and SEMAT are not yet fully formed. But nevertheless we do have people that are trying to apply some engineering rigor to the process of developing software and there is something there for all of us to learn, even if these things take another decade or two to become fully formed.

dbecker 13y ago

Is our industry doing the equivalent of offering free rides to hopeful software developers, calling them pilots, and throwing them by the thousands into airplanes just to watch them crash and burn? With some exceptions, it's less dangerous when a novice programmer writes ugly code than when a pilot crashes a plane. So we shouldn't require as much caution around letting people program as we do in letting them fly an airplane.

normloman 13y ago
Just don't let them program air traffic control software.
- herge 13y ago
  Or medical imaging devices.
  - ecopoesis 13y ago
    Or let them handle website security
    - Profpatsch 13y ago
      Holy crap. Or write Sony’s user management. Or Adobe’s. Or …
    - chiph 13y ago
      Or anything related to large amounts of money
    - aestra 13y ago
      Or any automobile software.
aestra 13y ago
http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2005/11/69355?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2005/11/69355?cu... 1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history. 1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable. What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured. June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing. First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch. November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy. Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five. The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure. At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder. also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Military http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Military The software error of a MIM-104 Patriot, caused its system clock to drift by one third of a second over a period of one hundred hours – resulting in failure to locate and intercept an incoming missile. The Iraqi missile impacted in a military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (February 25, 1991), killing 28 Americans. A Chinook crash on Mull of Kintyre in June 1994. A Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, killing 29. This was initially dismissed as pilot error, but an investigation by Computer Weekly uncovered sufficient evidence to convince a House of Lords inquiry that it may have been caused by a software bug in the aircraft's engine control computer. In April 1992 the first F-22 Raptor crashed while landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The cause of the crash was found to be a flight control software error that failed to prevent a pilot-induced oscillation. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183580/Epic_failures_11_infamous_software_bugs?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=6 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183580/Epic_failures... Osprey aircraft crash Two weeks before Christmas in 2000, a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey, a hybrid airplane and helicopter, suffered a hydraulic system fault that should have been remedied without loss of life. A hydraulic line broke in one of the two engine cases as the Osprey was shifting from airplane to helicopter mode for landing. According to the Marine Corps major general who presented reports during the investigation of the incident, the trouble was "compounded by a computer software anomaly." The flight-control computer stopped the rotation of the engine pods when it detected the hydraulic failure. The pilots went through the normal procedure and pressed the primary reset button to re-engage the pods. At this point, both prop rotors went through "significant pitch and thrust changes," which led to a stall. The plane crashed into a marsh and killed all four Marines onboard.

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noonespecial 13y ago

If one doctor can transplant a heart in ten hours, can ten nurses transplant that heart in one hour? Can a hundred nursing assistants transplant that heart in six minutes? Can six hundred hospital receptionists transplant that heart in one minute? The real question is: Could the doctor do the transplant without any nurses? Could the nurses help the doctor without the receptionists?

bjornsing 13y ago
I agree very much. All honest work is honorable work and it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. But I also think the organizational distinction between receptionists, nurses and doctors is helpful in making a hospital function. I must admit I sometimes feel that missing in the software industry. Given time we tend to organize into functional units where people know who's good at what and how to contribute, but it's sort of like if everybody was hired into a hospital with the same job description and then had to informally hash out who should play doctor and who should be the receptionist...
robin2 13y ago
If I wanted to be pedantic I'd say that you'd really want a heart transplant done by a surgeon, not a doctor... That said, I think the real questions is: who is Robert Martin, self-described uber-hacker, that his opinions should be taken so seriously? What has he written?
- Profpatsch 13y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil_Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil_Martin He’s the head of the agile movement.
  - Nimi 13y ago
    AFAIK, not the head, but one of the founders - one of the signatories of the agile manifesto back in 2000: http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/
- 13y ago

xacaxulu 13y ago

Don't hire and mentor a newbie or a graduate of a coding school, just hire a master coder+pilot. Perhaps the consultancy team at 8th Light could pick up your project for thousands of dollars a day...

mathattack 13y ago

IMHO... You can't get a crew of experienced software engineers without starting with hordes of novices. It's just not a field where you can say, "Pass the entrance exam, get some mentoring, and come back in 6 years with experience." It's a field that you need to explore and find if you have the passion. (And I hate the word passion) So it might take 20 novices coming out of these feeders to find 10 who become decent junior programmers, to get 5 who stick it out to become decent intermediate programmers, to get 1 who becomes a rock star. But is this so bad? What's the downside? Everyone who falls off along the way becomes someone with tools to make themselves more productive in whatever they do in life. And what's the alternative?

Cthulhu_ 13y ago
> And what's the alternative? I think the author gives an alternative in the form of his pilot training; intense training before being allowed to write code (= a proper and full education, instead of a course), and pair programming (= co-pilot) with an experienced or non-novice pilot (developer). The big corporate world doesn't tend to agree with this though, two people doing one job seems like a waste of money and time to a lot of managers that don't know any better.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Do you think this is the solution? Would it work in any environment? Start-up for instance? One could argue that training a programmer should be like training a doctor - once you get over the initial hurdle of getting into Medical school, it's all about a long period of learning and mentorship. My impression is that great programmers can come from unlikely sources. It's ok to cast a wider net for people, when the worst thing that happens is that they're more skilled for their efforts.

sailfast 13y ago

As a relative "novice" compared to the author, I welcome the suggestion that more formalized mentorship and "sign-off" by someone with experience would improve programming. Sorry I can't do your apprenticeship program. I see what you did there. Up scope! http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship The problem is that this cannot be implemented at scale, and certainly will not respond to demand. One may not have the opportunity to find in person mentors, but instead have the internet and a problem to solve. You have to navigate through on your own to find the people that do it right, and you may latch on to the wrong people! On the hiring side - for critical systems with a profit incentive and high potential, (or for a company with a unique mission that entices developers) you can afford to find and hire the bard. For other tasks, something is better than nothing so you get mediocre code. (there is still a HUGE market out there for that small something for small to medium businesses). For outlying scenarios where markets have become imbalanced by regulation or law (such as government contracting) you get incentives to put butts in seats regardless of experience as long as they meet the criteria. (Java cert = signed pilot's card right?) Certification is hard to get right, as is mastery. I applaud you for creating an environment to provide guidance and make mistakes and would welcome a larger scale effort to do so.

leetreveil 13y ago

Press the G key while you're on the website and you'll see their layout grid. EDIT: it's this: https://github.com/dotjay/hashgrid https://github.com/dotjay/hashgrid

edw519 13y ago

This discussion reminds me of Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the High Notes": http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html Instead of debating with every other PHB, PM/BA, or clueless customer, I have them read this first. It's fundamental for understanding how to use high achievers to get things done. (Love this part: "Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years.")

al2o3cr 13y ago

A question not asked by the piece: is what we do really "heart transplants" and Shakespearean plays? Sure, that surgeon can do the transplant like nobody else and ol' Bill can write a play like nobody else, but what if all the client actually needed was a bandaid or a quip for a greeting card?

lmm 13y ago

Have you ever worked at a job where a guy who learned to program 20 years ago has to sign off on everything you do? I did, and it was awful. I've also worked at a place that hired nothing but fresh graduates, and that... actually turned out pretty well. There were cases where they wrote more code when they needed to, or used an unsafe construct when there was a better alternative... but they were willing to reason about things, to experiment, rather than just "this is how we do it". I'll take an untrained grad over someone who rigidly follows procedures any day.

websitescenes 13y ago

This article is ridiculous. Someone needs to program the software obviously.

programminggeek 13y ago

It is probably worth noting that Uncle Bob doesn't seem to be implying that the pilot training model is exactly the model that we should use. His point if you read a bunch of his stuff is that as a profession, we should look beyond our own borders to learn lessons from doctors, accountants, lawyers, pilots, engineers, architects, etc. to advance the level of professionalism in our profession. If software is going to make the world a better place ideas like "move fast and break things" probably isn't going to end up being a net benefit overall, especially for important, life or security critical software. If we pile in a bunch of novices without proper training and hand them projects that involve account security, personal information, etc. we are going to keep hearing about major security breaches, password hacks, etc. The more that the software industry has major catastrophic failures costing millions/billions of dollars, the more likely that we get regulated.

Cthulhu_ 13y ago
And yet, go our own way too. Software is (or used to be built) like other engineering professions; big design up front, then build (and often have the actual construction done by relatively low-wage workers). Software's much more complicated though.

allworknoplay 13y ago

You're completely right, it would be much better if they all went into finance or management. There's no place for people trying to learn real skills.

memracom 13y ago

As the guy who formulated SOLID principles, co-created the Agile manifesto, and formulated the red-green-refactor process of doing TDD, I'd say that we should listen to what he has to say. Why do we keep training programmers in university to bang out low-level unstructured code? We know better and some schools like MIT with SICP have been following a different approach, but why is this not more widespread? Java is a horrible language to teach to new developers because it has traps all over the place that are best avoided. If a course started with DDD for a month before the first line of code is written, then perhaps Java would be OK. I'd still like to see all developers learn some machine coding and assembler but that should be something that you leave to 2nd or 3rd year after you have a grounding in how to structure programs.

dsego 13y ago

Should we have associations, guilds, licensing?

unclebobmartin 13y ago
I would vote for associations and guilds. I'm not a fan of licensing. I don't think we know enough to license people.

mattdeboard 13y ago

I wonder about the thought process that spawns articles like these. I'm a novice but I think I do pretty well for myself. I also didn't write my first line of code when I was very young. I didn't get any thrills or anything from programming until I started in my 30s. Obviously you need hordes of novices. What a preposterous, pretentious thing to say. It's the ultimate "first world problem" of career fields. "We have too many people who want to do this job because the pay is so good, career outlook is so bright, and job satisfaction is so high!" Yes you'll probably have to work much harder on a good noise filter when hiring, and you will probably have to be ok with taking a chance on hiring "newbs", hoping to get a great one who trains up well. This is a really geeky rant, and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it as in totally socially tone deaf. It's like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons wrote this. I know the author is a well-known guy in the software world but that doesn't change my opinion at all.

unclebobmartin 13y ago

Does anybody here think that healthcare.gov was put together by experts? Or was it more likely a horde of novices?