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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Allen Benn who wrote (3054)	4/18/1998 10:40:00 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Allen, as the end of the qtr approaches, any idea on what we should be looking forward to? Ramsey

To: Allen Benn who wrote (3054)	4/18/1998 12:19:00 PM
From: Mark Brophy	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 10309

Re: Software quality A guy named Ed Yourdon (www.yourdon.com) wrote a book in "Real-Time Systems Design" in 1967. He followed it up in 1992 with, "The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=013191958X/002-9062506-3132814). He made arguments such as the following at "The Continuing Saga of the Decline and Fall of the American Programmer": (http://www.yourdon.com/articles/DeclineFall.html) American programmers are 5-10 times more expensive than those in South America, Asia, and most of the developing nations. And the productivity of these offshore programmers, and the quality of their software, is often dramatically higher than ours. For nearly 30 years, we have known that tenfold improvements in software productivity and quality are readily achievable without magic or silver bullet technologies. The methods and techniques for achieving these improvements have been widely published in the U.S., but we don't pay much attention to our own preaching. He got it all wrong. Bill Gates and others gave him a good education. So, he repudiated his earlier work in his 1995 book, "Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0139561609/o/002-9062506-3132814). The newer book is summarized by articles such as, "A Reengineering Concept for IT Organizations: 'Good-Enough' Software": (http://www.yourdon.com/articles/GoodEnuf.html) Most IT organizations assume that their users would like them to develop software instantly, at no cost, and with no defects. But that's just not possible in today's world; in more and more application domains, we've been forced to accept the fact that the reengineering slogan of "faster, cheaper, better" really means "fast enough, cheap enough, good enough." In the past few months, the concept of "good enough" software has been getting a lot of discussion: the uproar over the Pentium bug suggests that it was deemed not good enough, while the surprisingly large numbers of defects that are publicly acknowledged in popular shrink-wrapped software products -- e.g., word processors, spreadsheets, tax calculation programs, and PC operating systems from a variety of the best-known software companies -- suggests that those products are good enough. He also describes his agonizing process of being educated by Bill Gates, a young man who is a college dropout (Yourdon is much older and has a Ph.D.): Some purists -- especially the long-time professionals of the computer industry -- may express horror at the "flight from quality." But I think it will lead to more rational software development projects, and a more rational way of negotiating the criteria for successful projects with our customers and managers. Perhaps Bill Gates will also educate you and other Wind River partisans. I hope you enjoy all these links. Although your prose is excellent, it would be more useful if you would substantiate it with links of your own. Otherwise, it's only one man's opinion.