>There was an interesting article in the LA Times business section yesterday about the current state of IS departments. It was actually kind of scary to see in print what our industry has come down to.
>
>The gist of the article was how money has skyrocketed to the top of the list of job requirements for programmers. Creating good code, or the learning experience has plumetted in the ranking. There was a term coined by McConnell in one of his latest books that basically describes how the current state of technology is to get a few programmers together and code. No design spec necessary. No more 9-5 type stuff, this is burning the midnight oil heads down coding.
>
>Of course you could expect boatloads of errors, but since people are working all day long, no problem to fix them. The goal is not to produce award winning software. It's to get a program that works good enough to show off to potential investors.
>
>Management was partially to blame as there are more and more Dilbert managers coming on-line who have no clue about the developement process (or anything related to programming for that matter).
>
>The article signed off by saying how we are probably going to have to pay for this type of environment in 10-20 yrs, much like the Y2K histeria of yore.
>
>Is this really what it's all come down to. Or is there just another world out there populated by the hotshot GenX folks that we are just not a part of?
>
>Pf

Perry,

Another group in the major telecommunications company where my current contract is located asked me for assistance designing a data layer in VFP for their project. When I suggested that one of the logical steps after determining the basic requirements might be a data model, the project lead stared at me like I had *three heads*, in complete silence, for several seconds (meaning, of course, that the other five people in the meeting were staring too) and then managed to stammer out "do we really need one of those?"

My answer: "Well, if you're planning on this layer actually *doing something*, it's almost a requirement."

Their response, almost in unison from three people: "But we need this in a month!"

(still shaking head at the memory)

Needless to say, they now don't want to use VFP for that layer because of "development time frame restrictions" -- they're going to use Access because somebody upstairs told them they could do the whole thing in three weeks (hysterical laughter).

Development skills mean *nothing* anymore except to other developers. Managers, clients, investors -- they could care less. It's *SAD* for those of us who have put forth some serious effort to think through how we design and build our apps.

It's like being a good bridge player -- unless you're interacting with another serious bridge player, nobody understands or cares.