Hi Joe. Thought this would be of interest. This showed up in my inbox today. Very timely. http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2206133,00.asp[^]

... Doug Filteau http://www.littlemountain.com

This showed up in my inbox today. Very timely. http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2206133,00.asp

... Doug Filteau http://www.littlemountain.com

All good points, Joe. I think we're more in agreement than disagreement. I believe (hope) that the engineering schools have maintained high standards for their students. I take a lot of pride in producing the most elegant solutions I can in easily understood code and only wish more developers would adopt that discipline. I had hoped the days of obfuscated code (whether intentional or not) were behind us but I don't believe they are. I agree that there was a rush into the IT industry during the dot-com boom by people who had no business calling themselves developers. The $$$ was their sole reason for being there and their legacy is poorly designed code and poorly performing systems that we're left to clean up. I also agree with your architecture analogy. Architects (whether structural or system) need to build objects with solid foundations and clear purpose, with an elegant execution and edifice that encourages their adoption. Time for me to shut up now. Thanks again for listening. ____ Doug

... Doug Filteau http://www.littlemountain.com

I rarely respond to messages on forums but felt that I had to on this one. {$RANT+} I have to disagree whole-heartedly with this one. I've worked on many projects fixing code that was written by engineers. Logic branches into the ether, insane database models, equally insane data manipulation and wading through page after page of spaghetti code with little structure and very bad variable naming conventions gave me some very nice paycheques over the years, so in a way I'm thankful that many engineers have considered themselves to be programmers. I have to admit that I've seen a dramatic degradation in the quality of code produced by CS-educated developers in the last five years and feel that the weakly-typed programming languages currently in heavy use are partly responsible. Strongly-typed languages can help enforce better development habits through the passive enforcement of discipline. They also seem to produce faster executables. The "elegant solution" that top-level developers strived for seems to be a thing of the past, replaced by the BFI (Brute Forace and Ignorance) model. In the old-time database analyst parlance, "assume infinite resources" seems to rely on the increasing horsepower of computing platforms to compensate for good coding practices. In the end, I think it comes down to discipline and dedication to your craft, whether it's cutting code or cutting meat. Whatever you do, strive to do it to the absolute best of your abilities. {$RANT-} Thanks for listening.

... Doug Filteau http://www.littlemountain.com