Profit, Doors, Science, Windows

[swatts]

What-ho Lovelies,

This is a phrase lifted from a reference in my friends dissertation.

"When profit comes in the door, does science go out the window?"

Forde,  Psychometric Testing – Critical perspectives

It struck a cord and this was backed up by a conversation I had with a very high-placed nutritionist. To paraphrase my conversation in one cumbersome question "Do you find that the scientific/practical nutrition world gets taken over snake-oil sellers offering packaged quick-fixes" her answer was an emphatic and angry "YES!". And this has always been my issue with some aspects of computer science and process.

Agile

"We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it."

When the agile manifesto was first published it was presented by experienced software engineers. It was great for delivering large projects, where customers were not seeing their software for years on end. It was a huge change for those projects.

Over the years the whole thing has been packaged and productionised so that there are practitioners who have never written a line of code. In short it has been taken over by project managers and often poorly trained "consultants".

What we've ended up with is not "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"........

but this!

I honestly don't know how any software engineer can look at this and not despair at how far from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development we have strayed.

I have nothing prepared, but I have a suspicion that I could apply a similar argument against some software design dogma. Nobody seems to ask who is giving out the information? What is their experience? How does their experience help with my problem?

The other thing to realise is that most current computer science comes from people without large projects under their belts. We're being lectured on programming by people who don't do a lot of programming. I did a brief search around on some of the famous names telling us about software design and there was a noticeable absence of software on their bios.

In this unscientific environment the only defence is to be open, but sceptical, try something and see if it gives improvement. You are the control in this experiment.

Another observation is that simple is very hard to package and sell, complex is much more profitable. IMO this skews everything to the complex. Whenever I see something complex I start looking for someone who is profiting from it.

Profit is not a bad thing, it's the skewing to the complex and sowing fear that I object to.

Computer Science has a great deal of value, but we should understand the limitations and differences between the projects and processes used compared to our problem domain before slavishly following advice.

Another consequence is the wrappering and layering of complexity. By this I mean the solution to a complex solution is not to simplify by removal, it's to simplify by wrapper. This leads to bloat and bloat is the thing that will kill your project.

If you like my writings, you may enjoy my speakings.

I can be found on the newly released GDevCon#2 videos, I highly recommend checking all of the vids out there is some great content here!

Check out our YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0jhJNGk9kjc12npjy6b4g

Lots of Love