Recently, while working within a large organisation, I came up with a concept for a new language which followed on from C# and F#. This new language was formed during a phase in the development where we were bogged down by policy and an increasing supply of management. This new language was called M Flat, and was cynically based around a design for a new language based on management principles. I posted this on a development sharepoint site, and was suprised as how fast contributions came in from other developers, which were just as cynical.
Here are a few examples of the language features described:
- New Try_Catch_Blame block: following the principle that whenever an error occurs, the main thing to do is to find someone to blame.
- Continuous Interupt cycle: During the execution of any code, a seperate process continuously interupts what is going on to get a status update.
- Obfuscation Semantics: language syntax designed to sound impressive without acutually conveying any real meaning.
And so on....shame I don't still have the stuff as there were pages and pages, even down to a section on design patterns.
Anyway, the point is, in one organisation nearly every developer offered the same cynical view of management. Hopefully, this is specific to this organisation, but I dont think so. If not, then what is happening ? Have we stopped producing good management skills, or is I.T. just getting too complex for the non serious techies to cope with ? or are management right not to trust technical people and if so who can they trust ?.
Personally, I'm edging towards the complexity thing. Not too many years ago, most of my managers came from an IT background, and could still remember their programming days. This meant that they could participate in IT discussions and, more importantly, they could spot when us techies were pulling a fast one or more likely could spot developers who were out of their depth.
Now, things have changed, its hard enough for us techie types to keep up to date, you just get the hang of ASP.NET & C#, then we get WCF/WPF/WF, you just get the hang of that then your project switches to use Sharepoint or Biztalk and your learning again, and again. Don't get me wrong, this is what keeps me interested. But what about your poor manager, or developer who can't cope and wants to switch to management for an easier life.
Lets be honest, if you don't spend 26 hours a day learning, your out of date. A manager who last coded in Turbo pascal 10 years ago has no chance of joining in in any meaningful technical discussions and has no idea if what they are being told is true , false or just meaningless gibberish (because they've been let down too often by the developers who can't cope). So the only option is to add more and more process and control in the hope that this will replace the lack of general understanding.
Even more worrying, is that this trend is spreading into Architecture. As a metaphor, would you employ an architect to design your house if they didn't understand about stress, materials, or what bricks were ? No ? then why trust someone with a £10,000,000 database project if their technical knowledge is restricted to Powerpoint and Excel ?
Don't get me wrong, there are still some good ones out there....it just seems that they are getting harder to find.
Am I wrong ? Hope so.