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I love the acronym.
I like your post on RDD. However, it usually isn't just the normal developer who decides on what the development IDE / framework etc is. It is a team of individuals that focus on a project and then cumulatively come together on consent about their project development environment. Your scenario does focus on good points but it seems that it mostly considers firms without the concept of development team.
Just my $0.02
Nainil Chheda.
Client requirements. current and future, always must be analyzed, understood, and designed on a logical level first, before deciding how they should be physically implemented and supported. Determining the technology platform before understanding the strategic business and operational requirements is a disservice to our clients, and we should be confident and honest enough to tell them so.
Recognition of "RDD bias" should be only one of the factors in the choice of technology, but of course not the only one.
Healthcare careers
IMHO this is a part of the so-called "Business-IT" divide.
Some IT people pursue their own best interests at the expense of their customers. This reflects badly on all software development professionals.
Never putting our best interests ahead of our customers should be a part of a software developers code of ethics.
I wish their were an organization out there that established such a code of ethics so that those of use who abhor this practice can differentiate ourselves from the RDD crowd.
Its funny that your against RDD since your Java/.Net guy. Maybe you should also learn php :>
Here's another view on this topic.
RDD is forced on developers by the market place. It is ommon for a developer to not even be considered for a position just because they lack experience with a particular app server, such as WebLogic.
This is odd because a major idea behind JEE is that if you develop against a standardized API, like JEE, then your skills and the app you write will run with minimal or no changes on any JEE compliant app server.
However, when businesses seek developers, the development manager, the internal HR person, and the external technical recruiter forget this reality about JEE. Instead they usually only consider applicants with experience, not only with a particular app server, but sometimes only when the applicant has experience with a particular version of that app server.
This is the common case in the software/IT industry when hiring developers. Developers don't usually make these rules, but must live by them or not get hired.
Developers who do not steer their careers towards using mainstream tools and technologies, may find themselves unemployable, especially when the economy is slow and many devs compete for a few jobs.
Developer may quit because he see that his success will better in another place. I don't understand what's wrong with him. It's a manager fault. If I can I will quit at soon as possible.
IMO, that's how many service industries are run. All these industries are characterized by a large information asymmetry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_information]
We can talk about ethical considerations but i think more important aspect is market health.
In some cases, like domestic software development market in developing nations, such behavior on the part of software developers and development firms seriously limit the growth of market.
All this theoretical stuff aside, I believe nature of Software Development business, job market pressures on software developers to acquire latest skills and rapid pace of change in software technology creates a uniquely complex situation.
You can view this issue from software buyer, seller, industry or developers point of view.
You definitely have triggered my train of thought and i would like to say a lot more but unfortunately I have to go back to learning new technologies. No one is going to hire me for such rants ;)
And let me tell you, based on my own sad experience, "home projects" get you almost nowhere looking for work.
What about if developer thinks that the technology he wants to use (like .net) will be good for client in coming future since the technology he is using in current is soon to die (like vb6) than if he suggests new technology to adopt; will he be right or wrong? Because he might not have any other suggestion that how it will help client for now but he knows that the software will run for a very long period.
How else to explain the au courant ecstacy with all things XML? How many understand that it is superior for neither data transmission (almost anything else is better) nor data store (IMS, anyone?). Other examples: EJB1/EJB2/EJB3, CORBA, SOA, Applets.
Point Haired Bosses are the root of it. Or, to put it another way, the MBA mentality which posits that A Real Manager is a skill set independent of the work being done. How many people know that the Web is structurally just a block mode disconnected interface: aka 3270 talking to OS/VS1? How many people know that AJAX is just a way to get back to what we had in 1988: Unix databases talking to character mode VT-220s?
There is more RDD in the Executive Suite than there is in CubeLand; although there are enough knuckleheads there, op cit XML.
By the way, I did once work for Optimed. What we did with character mode Progress still can't be done today with any technology. Well, if you can live without the pixel dust.
As a development manager, one of your key roles is to help the team focus not only on your customers' success, but also on your customers' customers success.
But there is also a pendant to RDD at the customer level: when customers buy into fads and are convinced they need something they really don't - see my post on Britney Spears and Software Product Development
[http://softwaresurvival.blogspot.com/2007/01/britney-spears-and-software-product.html]
There are just many ways to justify bad technology decisions.
Cheers,
-David
Such a healthy post. I believe it must help me as I am in very initial stage of my carrier.
Thanks for showing good path.
I have worked in academia, manufacturing, banking, and publishing - and it has been the same in all of those fields. Technology decisions are never driven by what is best - rather, they are decided by someone in the chain of command reading an article in Info World, Computer World, or CIO (if tech chain), or even The Wall Street Journal. Often, these so-called "new technologies" are already in place.
But, the developers who are complaining have a valid point. I actually had a recruiter who had had a customer looking for someone who knew XML, HTML, SGML, and databases. Um... if the person knows SGML and databases they are qualified to do what the person was asking. Of course, the rate quoted was ridiculously low since there is a dearth of people who know both. However, the search was unnecessarily narrowed by insisting on having several keywords show up in the resume that are just subsets of knowledge within the main field - which anyone who truly knows the field already knows.
Honestly, since the dawn of outsourcing the situation has gotten much, much worse in every field - not just IT. Oh, and the dawn of the MBA. I have managed both MBAs and non-MBAs and with very few exceptions, I have always wanted to fire MBAs because they showed an incredible arrogance and unwillingness to learn. Give me a hardworker with experience and the proper technical knowledge any day.
RDD is something the MBA mentality and outsourcing created. Guess what, you have to eat that which you have sown.
Pax,
MLO
My 2 cents.
Sree
I got your point, but you can't summarily put the blame on the programmers. Managers are equally responsible in amassing ridiculous software junk in the organizations that are no way relate to each other and then one fine day will start looking for a programmer to fill a position
"who has hands on development with Java, ETL, Cobol, Python, C# and ..... my ass.... able to work independently..... with minimal supervision...."
This kind of job market makes the programmers becoming "Jack of many trades" and "Master of none".
If i don't get a job and sit on bench for months due to this "Jack of many trades", whose fault is it?
When teams work by model you call RDD, it's mean that they only not motivated as well, they not feel their relation to the product and result, and probably not stay in company for a long time.
Healthcare plus IT is a great job