Pragmatic means facing the actual situation [LWN.net]

Pragmatic means facing the actual situation

Posted Jun 26, 2004 19:38 UTC (Sat) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550)
In reply to: The Pragmatic Programmers Interview (O'ReillyNet) by Odysseus
Parent article: The Pragmatic Programmers Interview (O'ReillyNet)

> I don't know what the fuss is, most of their advice is stuff you should be
> doing and have done anyway.

Well, strangely enough, there are still the odd few who persist as is their unenlightened wont:

> Now some 40 percent of teams in the U.S. don't use version control at all.
> 76 percent don't unit test, and 70 percent don't have a daily build.

And things are much the same here in the UK, see www.leshatton.org , e.g. the presentations collected here. If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

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Pragmatic means facing the actual situation

Posted Jun 26, 2004 23:06 UTC (Sat) by Odysseus (guest, #11518) [Link]

I agree with your point

AND the natural questions that occur to me are

"if they're not using version control already, how likely are they to pick up a book like this?"

On the off chance that they get this book, "if they're not using version control already, how much motivation will they get just from reading 'hey, you should be using version control'?"

As far as that type of shop is concerned, this book is very short on dealing with what REALLY matters, politics & institutional inertia & other such issues that are the real impediments to getting good procedures in place.