Paul Graham has a very interesting post that considers why it’s so hard for most corporations to produce good software. Actually, his post isn’t quite about that. Rather, it discusses why it’s so hard and so important for a programmer to hold a program in his head. Graham gives a list of 8 prerequisites for enabling programmers to do that. He says that:
- It’s amazing how often programmers manage to to achieve all eight on their own.
- It’s amazing how often corporations mange to do all eight wrong.
I agree very strongly with everything he says. I program the way he describes and I hate having anyone else touch the particular piece of code I’m working on. I also believe in small teams with a minimum of interference from above. Every manager’s nightmare.
Plenty of people will, of course, disagree but Graham’s article got me thinking about a discussion I had with Perry Metzger in an Irreal comment about pair programming. Metzger had observed that Emacs wasn’t very useful for pair programming and I made a snarky remark about pair programming. Metzger responded that he really enjoyed it and that he’s never been so productive.
That seems to directly contravene what Graham said and it certainly runs against my inclinations. The thing is, Metzger is a serious and accomplished computer scientist as well as a long time Emacs user so nothing he says should be dismissed out of hand. I suppose that this is another case of different strokes for different folks so we can only agree to disagree. In any event, take a look at Graham’s post and Metzger’s comment to see what you think.