On Fri, 21 Sep 2018 16:45:03 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 20:52:23 +0000 (UTC)
> Martin Gregorie  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 21:53:39 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>
>> > so you'll write the backend in C, middleware in Java and a web front
>> > end in PHP and JavaScript and feel thoroughly miser^Wmodern.
>> >
>> Yep, somebody who 'codes' by copying snippets from slashdot and calling
>> somebody else's JS fragments from github etc. may well do that. I'll
>> give it a miss, thanks.
>
>  It is also a common 'enterprise' style, sometimes it even makes
> sense (usually when scalability is a dominant issue, inefficiency is
> trumped by being able to throw more hardware at the job without
> thinking).
>
>  Thoroughly unsuited for most purpose of course.
>
.... and would have got anybody using it helped through the door with a
     hobnailed boot in all places but one [1] where I've worked.

[1] The Naval Dockyard Project, Bath, 1975 - the project was three years
late, £10M over budget and going nowhere fast thanks to the MOD's
creative use of the TMMITFM staffing method [2].

By the time I was involved, the MOD management had been shoved to one
side and replaced by ICL Datakill guys, who were actually pretty good,
and the programming duffers had also been removed and replaced by around
80 contractors, of whom I was one. Most were quite good, but there were
2-3 shockers:

- one was well known to a bunch of the others who said they'd never seen
him to finish a program: he worked a lot of overtime, pocketed the cash
and left just before his mess was due to be system tested.

- another didn't know that in COBOL one paragraph falls through to the
next unless a GOTO says otherwise. Consequently, all his code looked like
this:
   PARA-1.
     STATEMENT.....
     ........
     GO TO PARA-2.
   PARA-2.
     STATEMENT.....
     ........
     GO TO PARA-3.
   PARA-3.
     ...

- a third never did understand that a 'divide by zero' error would be
  caught by an ON SIZE ERROR exception. He thought it should cause the
  mainframe to screech to a halt and require a reboot.

Anyway, we got the system redesigned, up and running in 18 months, and
even had fun doing it. Bath is a nice,lively town and it was a happy,
well lubricated project that worked surprisingly well considering the
speed with which the team had been assembled. It turned out to be a good
social mix of remaining MOD HEOs, contractors and the Datakill crew
management.

[2] TMMITFM stands for the 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying
Machines' film and its "There is nothing a German Officer Cannot Do"
scenes as the German military flew across the Channel while reading their
how-to-fly manual. In this project it became implemented as "There is
nothing a Civil Servant Cannot Do". The MOD bosses staffed the project by
sending a bunch of HEOs on a systems course. When they got back they were
told to design the system, a complex one that was supposed to manage all
aspects of purchasing, stock control and tracking as naval equipment and
stores were bought, moved round between the four naval dockyards, and
eventually used up or scrapped. Two or three months later they sent
another bunch of HEOs on a COBOL course. When they got back the analysts
were told "Here are your programmers: give them some programs to write"
and the whole catastrophe started to crumble.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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