HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I think this talk is relevant https://youtu.be/lLnsi522LS8

This was also a point brought up in a recent talk [1] on software engineering, and what has happened since the "software crisis" was recognized in 1968.

The speaker, Mary Shaw, talks about Design Guidance, and how a decision chart is "a better organization of a body of design decision knowledge" [starts 27:40] and how we still, desperately, need something like that, and that there aren't any better ways to communicate such knowledge, that the speaker is aware of, than "this ancient chart."

(UML is mentioned later, but under the context that it is dying, which was probably a good thing.)

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8

Programming is ultimately about systems.

There's a recent talk [1] by Mary Shaw from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). It's about what has happened since the NATO conference in 1968 (dubbed the Software Crisis), and what engineering means in software engineering.

According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers, and ~2.5 million highly trained software engineers, and there's a need to get more programmers into the engineering aspects.

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 There's a link to the slides in the description of the video.

⬐ morgante

> According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers

I don't believe that statistic for a second, unless we're using some convoluted definition of "programmers" which includes anyone who can open Microsoft Word.

That would mean half the labor force can program. Ludicrous.

Looking at the slides[1], I'm pretty sure you interpreted that wrong. There are 90M end users of software, not 90M "casual" programmers.

[1] http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KE...

⬐ xjay

I'll correct some things: 1) The speaker said projection, not survey. 2) I interchanged "developers" and "programmers" at the top of the slide, but the speaker lumps "programming like things" into the 90M "end users," which among others include pretty much all the web people (scripting languages, database interfacing, web server security, etc).

Please see the relevant part at 49:50 [1], but I'll bring it in next.

The speaker pretty much defines "end users"/casual developers as people who do programming like things; "There are something like 90M people out there who are doing 'programming like things'; they are building databases, they are building spreadsheets, they are using scripting languages, they are building sophisticated websites--what are we doing to help them?"

It's a broad category, but I think the confusion is that programming is not simply about writing code, it also includes the overall architecture, and design of a system.

So what I get from this is that end users means anyone who didn't go through the academic channels to learn the engineering aspects, and that's who they need to reach. The speaker had a link to their software engineering programs at CMU [2] in an earlier slide.

Also, see the context in view of the stackoverlow survey--which doesn't add up if you look at the numbers, but the speaker explains it's because some people reported in more than once.--It sought to be an example of how "end users" end up doing "programming like things."

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8

[2] Software Engineering Masters Programs http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/