[MUD-Dev] [DGN] Creating a MUD

[fred at clift.org]

On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, David Bennett wrote:

> many other big companies know this and do this.  Motorola (for
> example) has spent a lot of time and effort into putting into
> place development places which are specifically designed to do
> reliable and efficient code.  The use very rigorous software
> engineering practices.  They have a couple of places that are
> rated at SEI level 4 (if anyone else knows that means :).

References on these assertions?  I'd love to go read more.

  (I mean, in particular some articles published about this specific
  company and specific instances of where they were actually helped
  - I see a lot of urban-legend and anecdotal evidence in this
  regard.)

> The stats on post production defects from Motorola's software
> engineering plants are significantly better than from other
> places.

Ditto.

But I think you're still missing my point - presumably these people
have very codified procedures and strict processes that they follow
and it works for them (SEI Lev 4 = 'managed software process").  I
still see no evidence that these same procedures they use could be
applied on other software, by other people, even by ignorant fools
like myself and still have it work.  To get good software these days
you still need virtuoso performers.  Standards are good, and
manageability is good, but it still isn't what I would consider
engineering.

Let me modify my basic assertion and say "There is little 'science'
in the computer science field of software engineering".  It all
boils down to "this works for us" where "this" may be very formal or
very informal.  There is such a wide range of crap passed off as
software engineering, that it is hard to find the 'good' things that
work hidden among all the academic literature and research done by
people who are proud of not having written a line of code in 10+
years.  Your typical university software engineering course will
expose you to some useful concepts and then try and offset that by
showing you whatever foolish ideas the professor is currently trying
to get published.

  (ok ok - I know I have very strong feelings on this subject - I'll
  try and shut up now).

Fred

--
Fred Clift - fred at clift.org -- Remember: If brute
force doesn't work, you're just not using enough.

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