Engineering I.E. Quality

[James Richard Tyrer]

Carlos Leonhard Woelz wrote:
> On Wednesday 07 April 2004 10:34 pm, James Richard Tyrer wrote: <snip>
> 
> This discussion is clearly off topic here. This list is a place to 
> support new contributors and coordinate work,

This is about coordinating work.  Or at least it was till Christian took
one sentence out of context and wrote a short book about it.  You are 
probably correct that I should have simply ignored his OT reply, but I 
don't seem to work that way.

> especially non programming work (that may be considered off topic for
> kde-devel).

Yes, this is about non-programing work.  Non-programing work (non-coding 
work is more accurate) can not occur if it is not valued by the self 
appointed coder class.
> 
> Discussing the intrinsic problems of the KDE development model is 
> kde-cafe material.

KDE-Cafe was closed.  It became a place to discuss how the Jews were going 
to take over the world. :-\  No I am not kidding.

> Or if you have a finished, constructive proposal, you can try posting it
> to kde-devel.

Unfortunately, I am still at the stage of defining the problem. 
Constructive comments would be appreciated.  And, I have no idea as to a 
solution.

Or, the solution is simple.  Developers need to drop the arrogance and 
admit that other work has value -- perhaps, in some cases, even more value 
than coding.  I would like for them to realize that engineering and design 
is more important than the actual coding.  Whether they do the engineering 
and design work themselves or have someone else do it is not the issue.

As long as the importance of engineering and design is denigrated, 
unpremeditated coding will continue to be an accepted practice -- 
pejoratively referred to as 'hacking'.

I note that I am not just stating some lofty ideas.  I am stating the way 
that I work -- the way that I learned in engineering college.  First I 
design a program, and then I write the code.  Sometimes this is a cycle: 
Design, Code, Design, Code ... etc.  But I always design before I code.  I 
do this because it works.  It results in better code with less total work.

Like I said on the Dot: Design twice, Code once.

--
JRT