"Programmers don’t know what a computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring over illustrated manuscripts."<p>Isn't this a bit like saying that architects don't know what kind of houses people want because they spend all day poring over diagrams? Or like saying landscapers don't know what people want because they spend all their time landscaping?<p>I hate to break it to the New York Times, but programmers are <i>actual people</i>. We're not that different from other people. No really!
Hey guys, heard about this new programming language? It's almost likey writing English. People reckon it will make writing software so easy that anyone can write whatever software they need - making professional programmers unnecessary within a few years.<p>It's called COBOL.<p>(from ca. 1960, that's what people really thought back then)
From 2007; unfortunately, the company has gone silent for the last half year as far as I can tell. People watching them have also been "frustrated by the secrecy and lack of urgency to release" (Martin Fowler: <a href="http://martinfowler.com/bliki/IntentionalSoftware.html" rel="nofollow">http://martinfowler.com/bliki/IntentionalSoftware.html</a>).
"he devised the programming method that the company’s software developers have used for the last quarter-century."<p>Would this method be the 'Hungarian Notation'?
"Programmers don’t know what a computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring over illustrated manuscripts."<p>"programmers are drowning in ignorance, complexity and error."<p>...to say Your welcome or F@*k off?
<p><pre><code> BJARNE STROUSTRUP, the designer of C++, the most
influential programming language of the last 25 years, has
said that “our technological civilization depends on
software.”
</code></pre>
I stopped reading there.