Rampant CodeCraft

March 06, 2007 Phillip Atkinson sent this link:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

From the article:

I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.

Wow.

As for the rest. I’m all about delivering products to the user as fast as possible. Period. Even in managed langs it’s not fast enough for me. My dream is to envision a UI and then once the UI is constructed be able to wire up the functionality to it without effort. I’m a visually oriented guy and am not as concerned with how cool it would be to create my own X, Y, Z objects to handle A-F data as I am concerned with how cool it is to provide tools to the client(often myself) that can make their life better in a near immediate timeframe.

If the world’s core development population views managed languages like I view VB6, then I’m going to have to just suck it up. While they are flexing their muscle writing that app in C, C++ I will have whipped out several and learned a significant amount about the interface between Developers and Users while the C guys learned a little about the interface between Computers and Developers but not much more than they already knew. I see the world changing and it will very soon be accelerating even more. Once that last person, that didn’t grow up around computers, retires then the demand for software that does everything needed and does it right now will grow even stronger than it already is.

For years I’ve balked at business application developers calling themselves Software Engineers. I’ve done so because as this industry matures there will be a divergence in what is now a single group of professionals. I see Software Engineers emerging as those that are focused solely on writing software, but on the software that exists close to the metal with knowledge of: compilers, linkers, machine lang, memory management, binary arithmetic, semaphores, dining philosophers, red-black trees, Turing machines, non-deterministic finite state machines, framework creation. The diverging vector are the Software Developers (or Application Developers) who are focused on delivering functionality to the masses. Yeah yeah, it’s a computer… so what… watch what I can make it do FOR YOU. They exist in an area removed from the metal; in frameworks and with tools that facilitate rapid construction and solid functionality. They are about fulfilling the user’s needs and transforming a computer into a useful device. The ultimate device.

Currently there are those that can live in both realms. They fully understand compiling, linking, NAND gates and voltages and write assembly code regularly while also being able to construct a J2EE app with EJB, and do it well. There are not many. The university view is teach them to be Software Engineers and they can become Software Developers if they so choose because the learning curve on becoming a Software Developer is flattened by the ease of use of the quality of tools and frameworks that facilitate rapid development. I can’t argue with that now, how else are we going to create Software Engineers? But who will take on the responsibility of training Software Developers? The employers? How is that working for you?

I’d like to declare that I’m proud to be a Software Developer. But there is a part of me that looks down my nose that those developers that don’t know the fundamental Computer Science stuff. As if that makes me more of a man. I learned C at LSU, C++ at SELU and have coded a fair amount in them. Do I miss it? Not even a little bit. No one misses STDLIB, do they? And for me they are in direct opposition to my dream of rapid development.

I’d characterize this stage of the software industry as the Wild West. It’s after the pioneers have settled, but before cities have emerged. Though with my employer choice I was careful not to be the Town Mayor shaking his fist as the cowboys ride through town, I’m also not the cowboy that does whatever they please because they can. I’d like to think of myself in between. No home to speak of, but has a strong sense of what is best for the current town, country and most importantly the people involved, with the will to enforce that belief.

DOS to Windows was like the pioneer’s log cabins and mud huts to wood plank construction. The new shift from Windows XP and WinForms to Vista and WPF is less dramatic on the outside, but is a required part of the inevitable future growth. As the divergence becomes greater, things like the Vista Bridge will be standard fair as insulation from the realm of the Software Engineer will become an accepted reality.

Back to the point. So MS is dumping backwards compatibility in favor of a shift forward? So what. Since when is it new that we have to learn something new. Take something far enough and it will stagnate, other industries would stay stable instead. Do we crave chaos? Maybe so, or maybe it’s because of the phase of growth our industry is in. This shifting foundation is the world we live in, we are Software Developers, we are beholden to the Software Engineers on the small scale. In the grand scheme though, Software Engineers are reacting to the needs we express.