[ale] a quick test of web site stupid

[JD]

SEI and CMMI are the closest solutions for high-quality software. They have
certifications, but those have very little to do with producing software. It is
all about processes, methods and techniques.

I worked in a CMMI-5 environment design, testing and writing code for 5 yrs.
The process overhead was huge. Programmer "productivity" was about 20-100x less
than other development teams where I've worked.  7 levels of testing with most
of those performed by independent companies.  I am not certified in CMMI
processes, but perhaps working where I did for those 5 yrs makes me qualified in
some way? I dunno.

I also worked on a small team with 6 other extremely great cross-platform
developers. The quality of that teams' was just as high as the CMMI-5 team. The
productivity was as good as any other team that I've seen ANYWHERE.  The people
made the difference. They had extreme pride in their work and considered any
issue a huge problem to be fixed immediately. Memory leaks were sev-1 bugs
there. No QA, no automated testing, just people who were smart, good designers,
and fantastic cross-platform (10-ish platforms) developers.

Then there are all the other places and teams that I've worked spewing out crap
code then spending 50% of their time fixing that same crap again and again and
again.  I think this is the norm for the industry.



On 03/06/2013 11:52 AM, David Ritchie wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com
> <mailto:jim.kinney at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Given the importance of reliable software in a growing number of areas, I
>     see a need to have professional licenses for programmers that touch finance,
>     health care, public safety, etc. We don't let just anyone design a bridge
>     and that's for good reasons. We need to rethink this field from a public
>     health and safety perspective.
> 
>     I can also see a need for mandatory professional certifications for System
>     Administrators in those same areas.
> 
>     ditto for DBA work.
> 
>     James P. Kinney III
> 
> 
> Snort...  the mice voting to bell the cat.
> 
> 1) Will never happen, as the companies want huge masses of potential employees
> for which that they don't have to pay much.
> 2) How would you certify competency? The field is changing all the time, and the
> demand for people who even 'kinda' know what
> they are doing currently (and probably for the indefinite future) will outstrip
> supply.
> 3) Supposing (or more correctly, "when") something blows up - what would be
> 'punishment' meted out against the professional?
> Are they really to blame when their employers aren't willing to patch, or
> unwilling to listen... ??
> 4) Shelf life of professional certifications is short, so professionals have to
> be selective. Licensing will, by definition, be bureaucratic and  trail
> current practice. Often the certification questions are a laundry list of random
> stuff that may or may not have any use in day to day administration,
> or aren't specifically geared to security related issues. I can't  expect
> licenses to be any more current.
> 5) making network secure that are also usable by your employees to get their
> jobs done (particularly as more and more stuff is becoming cloud/web based)
> is really a PITA. IPV6, I am guessing, is going to make this even harder, and
> corporate IT departments are largely clueless about it. That is just one way
> to see this blowing up. Bridging networks outside of buildings is getting
> increasingly trivial to do, particularly if have some level of physical access.
> SSL VPN's
> and tunneling are particularly troubling to me...
> 
> Disclaimer: Not based on experience with any past, present, or future
> employer(s). I do this to build my typing speed.
> 
> -- David