> the amount of socially necessary labor decreases with each passing year.
Isn't this Lump of Labor fallacy? There is not a fixed amount of work available because human desire is limitless. (and therefore so is human suffering, but that's a different discussion!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
I hear what you're saying, and I basically agree. However, I still see some shops building new product with Jakarta Struts, hand coded javascript, and no continuous integration. They spend way too much time doing things that could be automated, which would allow them to spend more time on quality, or more features. (Say, if you want to use a java webstack, have you heard of spring & jquery, and maybe you should try hudson for your builds?) So, its also important to keep abreast of whats happening in the field, so long as you don't fetishize the newest/latest thing.
I'm a strong proponent of TDD. In my experience its more productive, and results in better software. But....
I've been in this position before: We have a large existing codebase with no unit tests to speak of, and the business is not willing to fund efforts to refactor or add unit tests. It is very hard to add unit tests after the fact. Not impossible, but its alot of work, and business folks really don't care.
Much respect for the frankness and forthrightness with which he addressed this. I've always taken the exponential increase in the cost of bug fixes with time for granted. I won't do so in the future. We need more empirical studies of software development!
I've heard this (anecodotal) argument alot. Is there any empirical backing for it, and within what parameters does it hold true? My mother taught at a very expensive private school, which enabled me to switch from a lousy public school . The difference in the quality of teaching was dramatic. Private school teachers don't get paid alot more than public school teachers, and often less, although they are compensated with fringe benefits like I enjoyed, and prestige. In any case, elite private schools certainly get better results, which is why rich people pay alot of money to send their children to elite private schools. (Lots of this is attributable to the selection process, which is part of what parents are paying for.)
In contrast, public inner city schools can't choose their student population, and lack basic things like, books, paper, and air conditioning in the middle of the summer. I'm sure that proper and equitable funding of public education wouldn't solve all the problems in US public schools, but starving them of much needed resources certainly exacerbates the problems they do have.
Isn't this Lump of Labor fallacy? There is not a fixed amount of work available because human desire is limitless. (and therefore so is human suffering, but that's a different discussion!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy