On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
Edward Yourdon recounts an episode in one of his
textbooks about a
large assembly language program that was comment-free, except for
a single line (don't know the real processor so I'm faking the
instruction):
Edward Yourdon. Isn't he the idiot that played Chicken Little before the
new "millennium" and screamed that everything run by computer was going
to break and we were all doomed as a species and we should all buy
thousands of gallons of water and tons of food and bury them along with
ourselves in a plastic bin somewhere out in the desert?
perhaps, although that sounds more like james martin's style...
Ken Olsen also said that no one would ever want a computer in
their home, nonetheless the products created during his tenure
remain very important, especially to people here.
Hindsight's 20-20, and lots of people get stuck in their paradigms...
I don't think anything he says (or has ever said)
has much relevance
anymore.
No, like Brooks, he made points about the development of large-scale
projects which remain valid. Yourdon certainly wasn't alone in the
Y2K chiken-little mentality... and I don't feel inclined to consign
them, lock, stock, and barrel, to perdition, not quite yet, anyway...
:)
-dq