Re: database systems and organizational intelligence

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote:

[snip]

>Yes, however whenever a risk assessment tells us that the end-user is
>requesting responsibility analogous to operating the elevator themselves, we
>need to try to push the responsibility outward. We then work ourselves into
>a different job of fixing the elevator when it breaks and ensuring the user
>can recover from any mistakes they make when operating the elevator. When
>the risk assessment tells us that the user is requesting the ability to fly
>the airplane themselves, then it is our professional responsibility to
>ensure that they, too, go through the proper training to become a pilot
>before there is any chance of this.

     There is a problem here, too. It is fairly easy to put together a simple application. I use "application" here loosely to mean some sort of programmed entity. A spreadsheet would qualify. How much more complicated could a sophisticated app be? To such a user, it does not look like much, so we ought to be able to easily extend his app. When we look at it, we often see a lack of analysis or error handling and horrible stuff that does not scale well at all. The user sees no reason why we are being so fussy and supposedly does not have time to learn what we know. We then have an impasse.

>Which brings us to the fact that we, as a discipline, have made only minor
>steps forward (e.g. IEEE efforts) to formalize the training so that we can
>distinguish between an IT professional and an end-user in any way other than
>whether someone is part of an IT department in their organization.

     Of course. There is no solid boundary. Is putting together a spreadsheet programming? What about if you use macros? I coded a macro in Symphony that required using double-indirect addressing. That definitely was programming.

>But I, too, digress. --dawn

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:

     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.