On 19 Dec 2003 15:38:09 GMT, Bertil Jonell wrote:
In article ,
phil hunt wrote:
I've worked as a programmer for
defense contractors (and for other large organisations), and believe
me, there is a *lot* of waste and inefficiency. If the software was
written right, it could probably be done with several orders of
magnitude more efficiency.

What competing method is there except for Open Source?

Open source -- or rather, using some of the ideas from how OSS
projects are btypically run -- is certainly useful. Employing the
best people (the top 10% of programmers are probably 10 times more
productive than the average, and 100 times more productive than the
bottom 10%) is important, as is encouraging debate (in a
non-threatening atmosphere) as to what can be done better.

Extreme Programming has some very good ideas, as do other Agile
techniques. Collaborative systems for discussing evolving software
projects -- mailing lists, wikis, etc -- are good. Usingn the right
programming tools is important, for example the right lasnguasge or
(more likely) set of languages. On which lanugages to use, Paul
Graham's essays on language design, and the way Lisp makes it easy
for you to in effect write your own specialised language for the job
in hand, are apposite.

Concentration on software quality involves lack of caring about
other criteria, so forcing employees to wear strangulation devices,
or unnecessarily attending work at particular hours, are
counterproductive in themselves as well as being symptomatic of
wider PHB-ism.


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