Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Programming for the two big I’s (3): a sucker signs up:

(This is the third installment of a story that started here.

As soon as Arthur’s resignation was confirmed, I was summoned to a meeting with the software manager and his boss. They explained what had happened, and asked vaguely if I had any idea what might be done about it. The whole meeting had a strange air of unreality to me. I could not understand why we were having this philosophical conversation. “Why don’t you let me program the damn thing?” I argued. “I’m already familiar with the spec!”
“That’s what we wanted you to say” they replied. Apparently I had to WANT to do this as a precondition of being asked.

I had signed up to write ten thousand lines of code without a design...

(The next installment of this story is here.

No comments: