David Kirkby wrote: > I have suggested in the past that William buy copies of some books on > the subject of "software engineering" for regular developers. I am > fairly sure it is something he could justify. But to the best of my > knowledge he has not done it. > > Don't worry about that too much. William cannot solve all problems.
Here is my story: when I suggested to the Singular-team to organize workshops for practical problems in programming for new PhD students in the project, they didn't answer and I guess now they think I'm an alien *g. As far as I know, some member mentioned internally (maybe in a different context), the project is about _math_ and not about software engineering. So I'm questioning, can we do something else? If you think it is useful to spend books about writing software to sage developers, can't >you< try to get grant money for that from somewhere? @all If you know a developer who is contributing to Sage and for some reasons he does not own/read a book about software programming/engineering and at the same time it would be useful, I'll spend the money for the next 5 books ( one per developer ) if the book is less than $50. Maybe I should also setup a page with my favorite software engineering books, which are not boring or too technical. Jack Am Dienstag, 13. Mai 2014 16:44:23 UTC+2 schrieb Dr David Kirkby: > > On 13 May 2014 13:31, John Cremona <john.c...@gmail.com <javascript:>> > wrote: > > Many contributors to Sage have only had experience of writing code for > > them,selves before, and there is a lot to learn about in the different > world > > of open source sofware where you cannot assume that the person running > your > > code has a PhD in the area.... > > > > John > > I have suggested in the past that William buy copies of some books on > the subject of "software engineering" for regular developers. I am > fairly sure it is something he could justify. But to the best of my > knowledge he has not done it. > > There would need to be at least 3 criteria for issuing a free book > > 1) The person is a regular developer. > 2) The person would agree to spend some time reading it > 3) They agree to keep it, and not just sell it on eBay. > > I recall one Australian post-doc who came to work at UCL and was going > to implement a major piece of software to be used by others. The > software was to control an optical spectrometer he was developing. His > first degree was probably physics or electronics - certainly not > computer science or anything related to it. He realized that > implementing a major piece of software that would be used by others > was new territory for him. I recall him saying that rather than > "flying by the seat of his pants" he would learn how to develop the > software properly. He then purchased a book on software engineering on > the grant. It was then put on our book shelf, and I started to read > it. It certainly made me think about software development in a > different way to I had done previously. > > BTW, for an amusing, but true example of how not to develop software, > I can tell you a story about a PhD student at UCL. She never used a > debugger, and was really struggling with her code, so I offered to > look at it and try to help her. I then realized all here variable > names were Disney characters or similar. The the variably for the > absoprtion coefficient might have been "Micky_Mouse", "Snow_White" or > similar!!! > > > > Dr. David Kirkby G8WRB > http://www.vnacalibration.co.uk/ > Economical & accurate VNA calibration kits. > Coefficients available for HP, Agilent, Anritsu, Rohde & Schwarz and > VNWA network analyzers. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
