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How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
- None. "We'll document it in the manual."
- None. It's a hardware problem.
- One, but if he changes it, the whole building will probably fall down.
- Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
- Four. One to design the change, one to implement it, one to document
it, and one to maintain it afterwards.
- Four, plus one senior analyst to manage the project, one technical
writer to correct the spelling and grammar of the one who documented
it, one light bulb librarian, a sales force of at least five to drum
up enough users who want to turn the light on, 274 users to burn out
the new bulb, at which point we go to tender for another light bulb
change...
- Five. Two to write the specification program, one to screw it in, and
two to explain why the project was late.
- Wait! Maybe the bulb isn't broken. Let's try it again.
- It's hard to say. Each time we separate the bulb into its modules to
do unit testing, it stops working.
- The change is 90% complete.
- We looked at the light fixture and decided there's no point trying to
maintain it. We're going to rewrite it from scratch. Could you wait
two months?
- Only one, but she's not available. She's the only programmer we have
who can get the <insert name here> software ready to ship to customers,
and that's higher priority, you know.
- Of course, as everyone knows, just five years ago all it took was a
bunch of kids in a garage in Palo Alto to change a light bulb.
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