February 13, 2005

The Right "Tool"

I love those commercials from some hotel chain that have a guy walking into a surgery room in a suit and tie and the nurse asks, "Have you ever done brain surgery before?" and the guy answers, "No, but I slept at a last night!"

Those commercials crack me up because it would never happen in surgery, but happens all the time in the development community. "Have you ever written a web application before?" and your manager replies, "No, but I use the Internet at home, how hard could it be?" Then they want to jump in and help design the whole thing. I have seen this time and time again and never really could put my finger on exactly what was going on, but Katie put it nicely. People want to simplify the do magic here part of writing specifications and applications for that matter to the point that anyone can do it.

Just like in wood working, or metal working, you still need the right "tool" for the job if you want it done right. In this case, the tool just happens to be a human.

I grabbed this from Joel. If he isn't in your RSS feed reader, you should change that now.

Posted by carl at February 13, 2005 08:39 AM

Comments

Great link...now how do we make people better runners? I think it's called training. Code Complete type training seems like it might work for people who are capable of the basics, but OO Design seems like something that you have to just get. Then you look at the work of Coad and Fowler and their ilk and there are tons of ready-made OO models out there to be utilized. If you can't find a designer, buy a design.

Posted by: mm at February 15, 2005 08:49 AM