On Sat, Jun 22, 2002 at 09:28:22PM -0500, Mark Browne wrote: > Doh! > Forgot the mildly amusing attachment. > > <Snip - diatribe about software bloat> > The attached gem seems to sum it all up for me. > > Mark Browne > <Snip> > > > The Parable of the two Programmers > Neil W. Rickert > Dept. of Math, Stat., and Computer Science, > University of Illinois at Chicago. <snip> Interesting story, but my opinion is that this story does not compare apples-to-apples. Among our virtuoso software developer's activities, I saw no mention of gathering requirements from the end users, summarizing technical options for decision makers (aka PHBs), defining test cases, or writing user documentation. Like I said, not apples-to-apples. While I agree it's possible for two guys with shovels to be more productive than ten people running around having discussions and attending meetings (paraphrase from The Unix Guide to Defenestration), it's also usually important to clearly define/refine the software requirements before/while proceeding with a software development project (i.e. to avoid building the wrong thing). This can burn up quite a bit of time. Also, lines of code (LOC) is not a reliable measure of programming productivity. Fastest way to generate lots of LOC is copy/paste. Just try maintaining that kind of mess, though (e.g. 10 similar programs created with copy/paste). Substantial effort is commonly required to refactor code and actually reduce the number of LOC. Playing space invaders at work ... not generally considered a career enhancing activity. -- Joel Schneider Jazz - jazz88fm.com joel at joelschneider.net ISEE - www.i-see.org