(1) A hardware device used to customize a programmable logic chip such as a PAL, GAL, EPROM, etc. See PROM programmer.
(2) A person who designs the logic for and writes the lines of codes of a computer program. Programming is the heart and soul of developing computer applications, and programmers are the most misunderstood people in the business. They are constantly being criticized for taking longer to write a program than they initially estimated.
Why Such Bad Estimators?
It is very difficult for people who have not spent any time programming to understand why programmers are often the world's worst estimators. Programming is very creative, and after a program is put into production, programmers derive a sense of completion that is very satisfying. Thus, the more programs programmers write, the more confidence they have. As a result, they take on what seems like an eternal optimism that the job can be done easily. As their confidence builds with experience, it often seems their estimates are even more absurd. It takes numerous hard knocks to wise up and then double, triple or even quadruple one's initial estimate in order to put reality into it.
Easy to Create a Hodgepodge
It is also very difficult for non-programmers to understand how easy it is to program oneself into a real predicament. Programmers love to code and are often in too much of a hurry to dive in instead of sitting back and analyzing the problem carefully on paper. There are a thousand logic solutions for every problem, and it is so easy to pick one that seems to solve the hurdle for the moment, only to find out a month later that the logic is inflexible and making changes is difficult.
Even experienced programmers fall into the trap, which compounds over and over as more patches are made until the program becomes unwieldy and nobody can bring it back into stability. Programs are then reworked and reworked, because they were not designed correctly from the start. This is why projects take longer and why your favorite program too often becomes quirkier in its next version.
Novices or Masters?
It would seem that programming is a profession for bright, young whiz kids, and, in fact, there are tons of them creating and maintaining some of the most widely used software in the world. Whiz kids, or any left-brained, intelligent person, for that matter, can program with just a little bit of practice. But, it takes years to become an expert at anything.
Masters in all professions have earned their stripes by making their mistakes over the course of 20, 30 and even 40 years. When you consider the average age of programmers in most software companies, it is understandable why software does not always work well. Too many novices make decisions that even more novices have to live with. In addition, programming is such tedious work that those who would eventually become the experts burn out and take other jobs. There is a constant influx of inexperienced souls to this field. See Freedman's law, programming language, application programmer, systems programmer and salary survey. See also to the recruiter.
(2) A person who designs the logic for and writes the lines of codes of a computer program. Programming is the heart and soul of developing computer applications, and programmers are the most misunderstood people in the business. They are constantly being criticized for taking longer to write a program than they initially estimated.
Why Such Bad Estimators?
It is very difficult for people who have not spent any time programming to understand why programmers are often the world's worst estimators. Programming is very creative, and after a program is put into production, programmers derive a sense of completion that is very satisfying. Thus, the more programs programmers write, the more confidence they have. As a result, they take on what seems like an eternal optimism that the job can be done easily. As their confidence builds with experience, it often seems their estimates are even more absurd. It takes numerous hard knocks to wise up and then double, triple or even quadruple one's initial estimate in order to put reality into it.
Easy to Create a Hodgepodge
It is also very difficult for non-programmers to understand how easy it is to program oneself into a real predicament. Programmers love to code and are often in too much of a hurry to dive in instead of sitting back and analyzing the problem carefully on paper. There are a thousand logic solutions for every problem, and it is so easy to pick one that seems to solve the hurdle for the moment, only to find out a month later that the logic is inflexible and making changes is difficult.
Even experienced programmers fall into the trap, which compounds over and over as more patches are made until the program becomes unwieldy and nobody can bring it back into stability. Programs are then reworked and reworked, because they were not designed correctly from the start. This is why projects take longer and why your favorite program too often becomes quirkier in its next version.
Novices or Masters?
It would seem that programming is a profession for bright, young whiz kids, and, in fact, there are tons of them creating and maintaining some of the most widely used software in the world. Whiz kids, or any left-brained, intelligent person, for that matter, can program with just a little bit of practice. But, it takes years to become an expert at anything.
Masters in all professions have earned their stripes by making their mistakes over the course of 20, 30 and even 40 years. When you consider the average age of programmers in most software companies, it is understandable why software does not always work well. Too many novices make decisions that even more novices have to live with. In addition, programming is such tedious work that those who would eventually become the experts burn out and take other jobs. There is a constant influx of inexperienced souls to this field. See Freedman's law, programming language, application programmer, systems programmer and salary survey. See also to the recruiter.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2008 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- MSE rises like a phoenix from the beta ashes
- MSE rises like a phoenix from the beta ashesMost students can't afford Microsoft's...products. So they turn to open source. This has MS worried. So they are doing whatever they can to keep the next generation of IT personnel using their products.My son graduated with a degree in computer science three...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-16
- Question from a reader - What notebook/OS for college?
- Question from a reader - What notebook/OS for college?Check with the college to see what is their preference...If there isn't one then being as I'm from a Windows IT background that moved over to Mac I'd chose the Mac. If you do need Windows you can run Boot Camp, VMware,...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-15
- SAP: Transparent SME 'deep dive'
- SAP: Transparent SME 'deep dive'SAP = one sure way to kill your IT budgetAll the pretty graphs and words still don't hide the truth that SAP is a BLACK HOLE for money. Let's see, hmmm, i can hire a SAP programmer for $250 an hour or a .Net programmer...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-14
- Measuring (not so) recent BIND nameserver patching
- Guest editorial by Derek Callaway This post is meant to provide an approximation of BIND nameserver updates that occurred during the past month, most likely in response to Dan Kaminsky's DNS cache poisoning vulnerability. I conducted this research because I was curious as to how widely BIND...
- Blog posts 2008-08-14
- Court clarifies open source copyright: Key excerpts for the enterprise
- Court clarifies open source copyright: Key excerpts for the enterpriseCourt clarifies open source copyright: Key excerpts for the enterpriseHuge break for all the people out there working on projects, only to have their stuff picked up and altered and their credit taken awayAre you kidding?Really Larry?The teaser for this column...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-14
- Court clarifies open source copyright: Key excerpts for the enterprise
- It's a big day for open source software as a U.S. District Appeals Court ruled that just because a developer gave code away for free doesn't mean it's not copyright protected. The win, which stemmed from a railroad hobbyist spat, was praised by Stanford's Lawrence Lessig. The...
- Blog posts 2008-08-14
- Supporting the long tail of open source
- Supporting the long tail of open sourcePerhaps a good start......would be for "good developers" to not consider people with questions as "stupid".Carl RapsonMixing modelsIt depends on what "model" or paradigm or whatever you want to call it produced the piece of OS software.Was it the IBM / Redhat "we'll professionally...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-12
- Go MIT! (or should the students get a slap on the wrists?)
- Go MIT! (or should the students get a slap on the wrists?)Government censorship is wrong...and UNconstitutional.Make no mistake, the MBTA is a government organization.The US Constitution states "no law abridging freedom of speech".The judge who issued the restraining order is:1. an idiot2. a d_o_u_chebag3. a fool4. retardedRE: Go MIT! (or...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-11
- Ok, I admit it. I love NBCOlympics.com! Now go make it work on Linux!
- It's not often when a piece of technology impresses me enough that I do the "wow" thing when I'm using it. But the Silverlight streaming video implementation on NBCOlympics.com is truly awesome, even if I am forced into using Internet Explorer to watch it (EDIT: It...
- Blog posts 2008-08-11
- Today's assignment : Coding an undetectable malware
- Today's assignment : Coding an undetectable malwareHardly newsThe story on Ledin is hardly news. The security community has known about the inadequacies of signature-based approaches to detection of ANYTHING (all flavors of malware, intrusions, etc.) for years. Heck, I've been demonstrating to my students how trivial it is...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-06
- Today's assignment : Coding an undetectable malware
- Today's dynamic Internet threatscape is changing so rapidly, that the innovations and creativity applied by malware authors can easily render an information security course's curricular on malware outdated pretty fast, or worse, provide the students with a false feeling of situational awareness about today's malware that's driving the entire cybercrime...
- Blog posts 2008-08-06
- Should colleges really teach hacking?
- Newsweek featured an interesting article Saturday about a professor at Sonoma State University who actively teaches his students to create malware and otherwise do the nasty things online that cost companies billions of dollars every year. According to the Newsweek piece, [Professor George]...
- Blog posts 2008-08-05
- Failed IT causes major Georgia Blue Cross health privacy breach
- Failed IT causes major Georgia Blue Cross health privacy breachRegulation neededI agree that regulation is needed. But until consumers really start pitching serious fits, and/or the courts start implementing some punitive damages with teeth, it's not going to happen. http://whistlersear.wordpress.comRE: Failed IT causes major Georgia Blue Cross health...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-04
- Goodbye, comp-sci -- now it's 'service' as a science
- Goodbye, comp-sci -- now it's 'service' as a scienceI once thought that wayThats until I stop taking what I learned for granted. That happened when I started working with more CIS and MIS people that could whip up a quick VB app for show but brought down servers under load....
- Discussion threads 2008-08-04
- Day 2: iPhone Dev Camp 2
- Yesterday I learned a few lessons about live blogging. Not many people are refreshing it as much as I was. I should list my posts with most recent at the top instead of the other way around. ...
- Blog posts 2008-08-03
- My Awesome IT Job: Senior vice president, CA
- Hey, we all complain about work from time to time; we've all had lousy jobs. But before you call it a day and head off to the support group that meets at the bar, here are a few words from an IT pro that love their work. ...
- Blog posts 2008-08-01
- The more things change
- The more things changeBe productive with a touch only computer ?"The potential is amazing - you can imagine was well as I can, I think, what a 12″ iPhone replacement for the traditional laptop could do for user productivity"You are talking of home user or of business user ?Because i...
- Discussion threads 2008-07-30
- Are India and China taking over open source?
- Are India and China taking over open source?Silly headlineYou can't take over open source. That's the whole point of open source - fork it and do your own thing.It should be more like "China and India embracing open source".But I guess that isn't provocative enough to run up your page...
- Discussion threads 2008-07-29
- Active Studio 2008 (exe)
- Active Studio gives everyone the ability to develop mobile solutions, whether they are a novice or a seasoned programmer. In short you can create any type of application you wish with Active Studio and if you want to fully utilize the power and flexibility of a PDA or HHT's or...
- Software downloads 2008-07-25
- Do college degrees get you anywhere?
- Do college degrees get you anywhere?Just another thought...In the sector of work I'm in, I think IT is losing it's "elite" status as a job. With basic IT skills being aquirable with just a few certifications it is becoming less elite and more like a tradeskill not unlike an...
- Discussion threads 2008-07-23
Neighboring Terms
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- ZDNet News Videos
-
Tech news covering the latest in products, conferences and blog commentary, from ZDNet video.
- Watch the latest video >>
- Intel IT Data Center Efficiency Initiative - Going Green
-
"See how Intel is consolidating down to 8 global data center hubs through the use of consolidation, virtualization and standardization. The initiative is expected to save Intel $1.8B by project completion.
- See how Intel plans to save $1.8 billion >>
- Sports and Technology
-
Major League Baseball pitches new app to iPhone users
At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Jeremy Schoenherr of MLB.com demos At-Bat, a new iPhone app from Major League Baseball.
View the ZDNet video to learn more -
The SF Giants' new hi-tech ballpark
SF Giants CIO Bill Schlough discusses new technology upgrades at AT&T Park and outlines his dual role- managing technology operations at the backend while using hi-tech to improve player performance on the field.
View the ZDNet CIO Vision Series video - From our Sponsors
- Fantasy Football
-
-
3 Great Ways To Play Fantasy Football
Play for free, play to win cash prizes- up to $3500, or customize your own league.
Learn More » -
