Software developers describing their work in 1973 [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
"Q: What are the cons of your profession? A: Almost every application that is being made ends up lagging in schedule, regrettably."
Experimental music from very short C programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtQdIYUtAHg
Robotic Liberation (VIC-20 demo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8
I'm grateful, of course, for the technological progresses we've made since '73, but how come this is still an issue?
You've answered it yourself :-) It's not a technical problem, it's a social issue.
Technological advancements have, to this point, had fairly limited effect on mitigating error in human input.
At the end of day that's precisely the joy of this field. Else it's just a job.
I won't bother citing because it's literally overwhelming, but it's pretty clear that there are many companies producing software with the long-term view in mind, and I bet every single one of them is subject to schedule issues.
I've certainly been on teams with long-term thinking embedded in the process and spent time explaining delays, which is of course merely an anecdote, but rather suggestive of things not being as black and white as you'd like to present them.
edit: minor wording cleanups
Um, maybe its just been the places I've worked at, but I've been repeatedly told "we should ship software rather than get everything perfect".
I agree, at the same time, most if not all of the problems I've encountered (including ones I've built for myself) have been because of this impatience.
They're happy to pretend good estimates are possible without that, though, and complain endlessly about how bad estimates always are.
b) Developers are bad at estimating the unknown unknowns that will bite them.
c) Padding estimates is somehow seen as a bad thing, probably due to...
d) Business pressures that incentivize everyone to quote the earliest possible date something could be ready, rather than the date it will most likely be ready.
Note: Probably playing it and the other classics too much haha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU?cc_load_policy=1
(There's high quality english subtitles there.)
Finished product:
I'm half that good!
It seems like our profession hasn't changed much at all. Makes me feel like I'll be well prepared for the workplace 40 years in the future.
As someone who spent five and a half years (first four for a BS mathematics degree and a year and half for BS computer science degree) as an undergraduate student, it makes me happy to hear professionals say that.
K-12 school is just as important as ever. I just wish we started second language instruction at lower grades. It could be Spanish, French, German, Mandarin... It'd be nice if we started much earlier.
Is he suggesting this work is the cause of mental health issues? Seems to me almost every techie I know has below average mental health. Chicken-egg problem here.
Conundrum.
Do all those people look like they actually hate their jobs, or is this just a Finnish manner?
Many years later, and we are still struggling to solve the same software engineering problems, per example, project delays.
The video also shows that, in 1973, the requirements changed all the time. People had a lot of meetings, and they think that programming is a lot about teamwork and collaboration. Requirements analysis, before it had this name.
In reality there's a lot of back-and-forth. This is easy, this is hard, this is impossible, we should reorganize this or that, some development path requires more investigation, etc.
If I was a kid watching this I'd conclude it was stressful and subservient.