By mswatcher
via blog.jayfields.com
Published: Jan 06 2009 / 21:50
It's common to compare ourselves to doctors, lawyers, and other highly-paid professionals. Unfortunately, almost every comparison breaks down dramatically, very quickly.
When doctors screw up (massively) they get sued. When (permanently employed) programmers screw up they get let-go, and they go find a new job, usually with more responsibility and a pay raise. There are no ramifications for software malpractice.*
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Comments
nguminghie replied ago:
A follow up of this post appears here: http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-net-negative-producing-programmers.html
nightwind replied ago:
Very black and white. Author has lost perspective.
The vast majority of software packages isn't comparable to medical procedures in any way. If the software fails, nothing much happens apart from having an unsatisfied customer (who may switch products). If you succeed at locking him in he can't even do that. And if you have a look at the most successful (commercial) software, you'll find tons of bad code, horrible UI design and limited functionality everywhere. (Ever worked with SAP R3?)
The sad reality is you don't need top developers to be successful. Being quick to the market, combined with good and aggressive marketing will beat good coding and brilliant developers any day. Finding really good developers is hard to impossible. Trying to find them instead of shipping mediocre code by mediocre developers today may mean your business fails. Only a very tiny part of the software business really needs those brilliant developers (think Google, Amazon, core OS development). Most of it boils down to "display some forms and read/write to a few database tables". That kind of applications doesn't need nor attract great developers.
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