[LRUG] Development methodologies (Was: Code samples: To do or not to do)

[Tim Cowlishaw]

On 7 Apr 2009, at 14:29, Murray Steele wrote:

>
> The problem is that I'd say the majority of programmers literally  
> do. not. give. a. fuck. about computer science, software  
> craftsmanship, development methodologies;

This is an interesting point, that I've been meaning to bring up for  
discussion - it strikes me that within the web development world at  
large (but especially the ruby and rails communities) - the focus of a  
lot of our innovation and discussion seems to be the 'development  
methodologies' you mention.

Without wanting to knock TDD, Agile, Scrum, XP, User stories or any of  
the other methodologies and strategies we use (I also use, and am an  
enthusiastic proponent of most of them), it seems to me that these  
concerns are more to do with business processes and project management  
than computer science or programming per se.

I suspect that this is a result of Rails's philosophy of 'convention  
over configuration' and cheaper hardware that makes computational  
efficiency less important (as my old boss used to respond to problems  
about optimisation - 'computers are cheaper than developers'), but it  
strikes me as interesting that a large part of a developer's duties  
seem to have shifted to this sort of quasi-management role based  
around these tried-and-tested development methodologies and frameworks  
that do most of the computational heavy lifting for you, possibly at  
the expense of traditional computer-science knowledge and skills

Therefore (and I'm playing devil's advocate for the moment), do you  
think that web development as a profession is becoming more of a  
specialised administrative / management role for people who aren't  
scared to type arcane words into black screens, or is am i  
underestimating the need for specialised computer science and  
programming knowledge within the business of developing web  
applications?

Cheers,

Tim