Most of those small programs deal with specific tasks, one-offs. The problem with software engineering on most large projects is dealing with more general tasks, more users, more potential things that can (and will) go wrong. I didn't say sysadmins were under appreciated, but I don't think a sysadmin would necessarily make a good Software Engineer. I excellent programmer, a genius programmer even a sysadmin can be. Its just different than working on a major project where tons of people are going to be using it. Didn't mean to dis sysadmins. -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Mark Browne Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 11:23 AM To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: [TCLUG] What is a Programmer?: Was Compensation.. salaries and Vacation. I see lack of respect for getting useful work done with a few line of code or a small script as a plague. *nix is famous for writing a small tools and plumbing them together with pipes. With the nice front ends you can create with almost any GUI builder, there are few reasons for software bloat. This issue has been kicking around for a long time. A good programmer can see the little problem trying to get out of the specification, and knows how to code it well. A Software Engineer / Analyst my be a necessary evil, but in my experience this is the sign of a company run by PHB. (Pointy Haired Bosses) I like the approach described in the "mythical man month" book better. As a consultant I have seen several hopeless projects designed by committees, handed off to flocks of programmers and tested by a horde. I have coded the SAME applications at home and used the this as a tools to understand what they were trying to do. There are *very* few problems that require over 10k lines of code. And these SHOULD be open source. The attached gem seems to sum it all up for me. Mark Browne <Snip> I would have to say Software engineers are often a systems administrator, but systems administrators are very seldom a Software Engineer. Sorry, writing a little script is considered programming, not Software Engineering. One you start pushing millions of lines of code, you will understand. Its all in the planning and design, hence the Engineering. <snip> On Sat, Jun 22, 2002 at 04:14:40AM -0500, Scott Dier wrote: > > Software engineers are not systems administrators. It depends, a lot of system administration involves writing little scripts here and there for automation of tedius tasks, as well as writing front- ends for the sales/tech support/accounting droids. I think it goes hand-in-hand (although I don't think system admins would be writing anything to be used by anyone else but the company) > Scott Dier <dieman at ringworld.org> http://www.ringworld.org/ -- Matthew S. Hallacy FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified http://techmonkeys.org/~poptix GPG public key 0x01938203 _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.371 / Virus Database: 206 - Release Date: 6/13/2002 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.371 / Virus Database: 206 - Release Date: 6/13/2002