not enough real programmers? (was Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues, 1985-1986)

[Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com>]

>> "Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers
>> and deluge the hobby market with good software."  -- Bill Gates, 1976

> So I guess Bill hasn't been able to hire ten "real" programmers yet...

Or perhaps he hired *too many* real programmers, which is another
well-known method for obtaining suboptimal software.  See
_The Mythical Man Month_ by Fred Brooks.  There's a nice 20th anniversary
edition with new material, but almost all of the original material has
held up quite well.  Hard to believe that so few people have learned
anything from it.

Or, perhaps more likely, the people that *have* learned from it refuse to
manage the impossible-schedule megaprojects, so the companies that need such
things done are forced instead to hire the PHBs [*] that claim to be able to
do it.

Eric

[*] I've seen them called PHBs or PHMs.  Don't confuse them with PhDs,
although some holders of the latter also happen to be the former.