General talk about software patterns

["Reich, Shalom" <Shalom.Reich AT gs.com>]

I don't think a rock-solid technical team "will probably choose the best
technology", this is usually dictated by the environment (employer).  I do
think a rock-solid technical team will implement faster, communicate to
management effectively, etc, etc.

In my experience, it is more like 3% in most shops - not 1%.  I agree with
your statement "for every 10 people maybe one knew what was going on and was
productive."

Some possibly related comments :-)

While I don't have a PhD, I did experience a "crisis" as I neared my 10th
year in programming.  I noticed that many of my friends who had entered the
field about the time I did were leaving the field.  I also noticed that I
came to a new job all excited about the prospects and learned lots of new
stuff the first year or so.  Then the next two years I just repeated the
first year again and was "bored".  So I found a new job.  By the time year
10 rolled around, I noticed that I had done this 3 times - and I had to ask
myself if I wanted to constantly change jobs or if I too should leave the
field completely.  In the end, I decided that I liked computers too much to
leave the field and that I needed to adjust my attitude about what was
"interesting" in order that I shouldn't feel the need to change jobs so
often.  Over the years, I've changed my "challenge" to building systems that
are easily enhanced, modified and maintained.  This has forces me to learn
new techniques (still trying to wrap myself around xUnit) and technologies
(moved to OO a while ago) to meet my internal commitments.  I still change
jobs occaisionally (and I still feel that 3 year itch) but I find my
problems with jobs are now things like the arbitrary hours that I need to
spend at work rather than the work itself.  Since I am now coming up to 30
years in this field, I think the change in attitude was a positive thing for
me.

If experience and responding to a challenge are part of what makes a good
programmer, perhaps things like this are why the percentages of "good"
people are so low.

Shalom Reich

-----Original Message-----
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 On Behalf Of Chris
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Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 1:50 AM
To: 
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Subject: RE: [patterns-discussion] Pattern-Oriented Programming


Oh, and another thing!

Naturally, a rock-solid technical team will probably choose the best
technology, implement faster, communicate to management effectively, etc,
etc.  Unfortunately, the 1% of such individuals can only go so far.....

I've consulted for large companies where for every 10 people maybe one knew
what was going on and was productive.  The reality is that a rock-solid
technical team likes to work on interesting problems, and doesn't want to do
something that's been done a million times over (think eCommerce).  Not
everyone is a Software Engineering PhD, or very much interested in
continuing their education past the bare-bones-minimum, or very much
interested in working at all.  I'm not a Software Engineering PhD, and even
I'd be bored if I were working on American Express' eCommerce site.  I can
only imagine how a real PhD, or similarly trained/talented individual would
feel.