How far under the duvet?

[Merrion]

Over the last decade (or more) the general population has become a good deal more computer literate - even more so inside the corporation.

Some of the formal categorisations of the IT environment (business analyst, quality analyst etc.) are throw-backs to an earlier time wher there was a clear demarcation between tech and user. However many of the more successful applications now go down the route of allowing significant user customisation and even programmable macros.

In addition a great deal more is now being done inside the IDE (a.k.a. under the duvet) as both BA and QA roles now have reason to fire up visual studio.

Is the logical end game of this trend self-build applications made from functional chunks supplied by developers? Thoughts?

[Shaggy Hiker]

We've discussed just creating a series of APIs that can be accessed internally for building whatever app people want to build. That sounds a lot like what you are talking about. This appears to be much more applicable if the app in question is some kind of data presentation, web site, Augmented Reality, or similar type of thing. REST services, Web Services, and the like would all be viable means to that end, but we haven't completely bought into it, yet. The skill level has improved, but it is patchy, and will probably remain that way.

[szlamany]

It's a holy grail that will never be attained.

I've watched ivory tower educators attempt to implement data mining tools that would bring the "data" to the hands of the "users" for "self analysis"

10 years later - nada - can't do it. Still want the IT dept to build those data mining queries. Let them do it themselves - with all those neat selections and query by examples - they ultimately get it wrong.

Can't do the IT job at the non-IT level.

Blame it on the data mining software?? They do that over and over again (making the software houses that produce that software big $$'s) - but still no one at the non-IT level wants to do anything other then get the data handed to them "pre-processed".

In my world there is still a clear demarc between tech and user. And being in the education world you would think that line would fade first.

It's all FM to them (the M is magic - you figure out what the F is )

[dilettante]

Yeah, users (and your "BA" and "QA" and "PM" types are just users, not programmers) often cry and kick for things like this. As soon as anything gets beyond utter simplicity though, over the fence with the rat's nest of hackish rubbish and they want some programmer to deal with it.

Ironically most of the problem is often simply muddy thinking and a total lack of definition of what they were after.

These forums are chock full of more-than-slightly-amusing threads started by the clueless. These aren't all 12 year old kids trying to learn either, not by any stretch. The "IT" types (in the Microsoft-warped sense of the term, meaning box jockeys or more grandly "network administrators") are often the most hilarious reads here though.

Decent programmers aren't born, they're made through study, work, and experience.

[dilettante]

My biggest gripe of late are the "QA" types.

They go out and waste money on "magic" tools of all description. These don't work out of the box, and normally require significant configuration and often some scripting. So as already stated, the tool gets blamed or it gets plopped onto the programmer's desk.

After a few rounds of dissatisfaction sometimes they'll heed the repeated question: "What is it that you need?"

Once that dialog finally starts, the programmer can often go sit for a day or two and craft something that they can actually use. Of course the time required is still begrudged, and when the requirements change they'll blame the programmer for that too.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Decent programmers aren't born, they're made through study, work, and experience.

I mostly agree with that, but not completely, because there does seem to be a certain similarity among those who take to coding.