Re: Oracle 9i + Death of the DBA

I agree with Sybrand's observations for the most part, but I need to extend his thoughts on lack of formal education of developers, because I have been in this IT game for some time now, and it is so evident.

Now I'm not saying that there doesn't exist DBA's that, errr, well, would be better apt at serving french fries rather than performing some simple DBA tasks. I know that they exist. But the biggest problem I see with developers is lack of education. Only in North America can you work on a project where a developer who has a geography degrees from some ho hum university/college leads a development project, who himself believes the traveling salesman problem must relate to recent price increases at the gas pumps. I've seen countless developers from some foreign country who clearly did not learn the same level of required training and teachings to perform adequately in the position of developer in North America. I have seen countless computer science degrees from foreign countries where unfortunately the standards of teachings is not up to North American standards. Ask them to describe the Red/Black Tree algorithm, and they draw a red tree trunk with black leaves and a bird's nest. These are the folks that have fallen into the developer role, and who never really excel at the position, simply because they lack basic knowledge that one gets from credited North American schools and courses; courses like structures, algorithms, database principals, etc., etc., etc. Seriously, take a close look at your project's development team, and think about each member's education background. I guarantee more then half are as I describe above.

What amazes me is how project leads throw more and more of these sub-standard developing resources at projects expecting them to bring up the level of productivity, when the end result is a larger underachieving development team. It's just disappointing.

Just my daily rant folks.

Phil

P.S. For fun, go ask each developer in your project group(s) to describe the Red/Black Tree algorithm. Take score! Give bonus marks to any developer who can give a definition of NP-complete!

"n3tgan3sh" <iosonoproprio_at_libero.it> wrote in message news:bm6a9j$ihcik$1_at_ID-180684.news.uni-berlin.de...
>
> "Sybrand Bakker" <gooiditweg_at_sybrandb.nospam.demon.nl> ha scritto nel
> messaggio news:fshbovg52ffo9rvk70d7t8pi6b4ku6c52e_at_4ax.com...
> > On 9 Oct 2003 13:21:08 -0700, ed_zep_at_ntlworld.com (Ed) wrote:
> >
>
> > I also think Larry and Oracle are moving in a direction many smaller
> > organizations don't need and don't want: they are basically satisfied
> > with 7.3, they have been forced to upgrade to 8i, but they really
> > don't need. Further 'improvements' of Oracle will only increase the
> > reluctance to upgrade, as it will cost money to adapt everything to
> > the newer version.
>
> Sybrand, do you permit to me to print this and hang it on my IT dept wall
?
> :-)
>
>
Received on Fri Oct 10 2003 - 09:00:03 CDT