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

[Eleanor McHugh]

On 8 Apr 2009, at 11:14, Tim Cowlishaw wrote:
> 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?

I'd say web development is shaped in large part by the agency-style  
nature of much of the work, the low margins that clients are willing  
to pay, and the need to meet very tight deadlines.

There are interesting CompSci problems to be solved and for any large  
and successful site optimisation will rear its ugly head at some  
point, but the majority of web projects are relatively small and will  
never need those skills. In that sense web development has a certain  
amount in common with interior design, a discipline which is certainly  
helped by some knowledge of architecture and building but which  
ultimately is more the aesthetics of the end product and customer  
satisfaction. The popular methodologies achieve that by engaging the  
client in a specific manner and making them clearly culpable for what  
that's delivered (this kind of engagement is intriguingly also a  
feature of the more effective torture techniques lol).

Despite my reservations about these methodologies they clearly serve  
their purpose well, that being to formalise what people like me with a  
long history of software development do intrinsically (learnt the hard  
and painful way I hasten to add) into an extrinsic framework that can  
be followed by people who don't have that experience.

Codifying Best Practice like that has to be a good thing, even if it  
does bother me that many people follow these methodologies without  
understanding both why they're effective and where their fracture  
points are.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason