EppsNet

Most people learn to be programmers the same way I did: take some classes, write some code, compile it, hand it in . . .

The kind of projects you get in a programming class are pretty homogenized, and a lot of things that are very important in real life are either simplified or ignored: scope management, risk analysis, time/feature/resource tradeoffs, and so on.

So when I got my first job, I could write code in several different programming languages, but I hadn’t developed the discipline or attention to detail required to write software that companies could actually rely on to run their business.

Fortunately, I was able to work with managers and senior developers who had developed a professional discipline and were able to pass it along to me through training and mentoring.

There was a seasoning process that new developers went through, and in a few years, I had learned enough to be able to mentor junior developers myself, and the cycle began anew.

At that time, a senior developer might go on to become a lead developer, then a project manager, then a software development manager, a process which, unless you were some sort of a prodigy, would take about 10 years.

That Was Then . . .

A few years ago, there was a tremendous boom in the software business caused by the fact that every business, group, organization and enterprise in the universe suddenly had to have a web site.

The demand for developers outstripped the supply, professional barriers to entry were lowered and new people poured into the industry.

This influx of people at the lower levels pushed everybody up. People were promoted at a wartime clip and unfortunately found themselves in positions where they were expected to mentor others in a discipline that they had never had the opportunity to learn themselves.

So they did what they knew how to do — what everyone starting out knows how to do — write code, compile it and hand it in.

Professional software development became one big class project, with sadly predictable results.

It took clients a while to catch on to that, to stop funding it, but when they finally did, the industry went into a death spiral that we haven’t yet been able to pull out of . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.