On 03/21/2013 11:39 PM, Rüdiger Asche wrote:
well, I don't know where the myth comes from that design and coding and debugging can be separated, but after 20+ years as a software designer and designer trainer in various companies ranging from a very few to several thousand developers, I've yet to see any (commercial, I'm not talking about academics) environment in which there are distinct people doing design and coding.
I don't want to undercut your main point, because I think it's right. But in my experience, software companies for niche markets - which I think includes most small software companies - usually have distinct people doing design and coding because of the huge amount of domain knowledge needed to design software.
The first company I worked for developed judicial automation software. We had people whose job was to study the workflow in a county courthouse, and use what they learned and their knowledge of law and the justice system to design software. The requirements for designing were so specialized that, even though the developers learned some of it, we had to keep the designers in the development loop for the life of the software. In particular, when developers designed something, it had to be scrutinized and approved by the designers to make sure it wouldn't cause users to run afoul of US, state, or county law.
The next company I worked for had dedicated designers as well, which we needed for their knowledge of dental offices. No developer had the time (or inclination!) to learn *every last detail* about how a typical dentist's office is run, including supply and equipment management, budgeting, billing, insurance, and all the other little things that surround the actual procedures. Again, the designers were kept in the loop for the life of the software.
I see your main point as being that *a development loop exists*, and that was the case at both companies.
Neil ⊥ ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
