Comments on: Joel on Development Abstraction http://twasink.net/2006/04/12/joel-on-development-abstraction/ Robert's Rambling Ruminations Regarding Reality... Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:31:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Robert http://twasink.net/2006/04/12/joel-on-development-abstraction/#comment-353 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 08:36:51 +0000 http://twasink.net/wp/?p=189#comment-353 Perhaps, but I read it as Joel’s point being that:
* There’s a lot that goes on beyond the scenes at a company
* Many of the roles in a company serve to buffer the other roles – e.g. tech support buffers accounts from the hassles of keeping the accounting server up.
* Many of the buffers are reciprocal (accounts buffers tech support from the hassles of getting the payroll run completed)
* When management is doing their job right, a lot of these buffers aren’t very obvious.

When you only focus on what the other roles do for you, it looks like they are servants. But the programmers in Joel’s articles had outgoing responsibilites as well: they had to develop product, fix bugs, investigate customer bug reports, etc. It’s just that those responsibilities weren’t to (many of) the other roles in the company.

]]> By: Doug http://twasink.net/2006/04/12/joel-on-development-abstraction/#comment-352 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:40:41 +0000 http://twasink.net/wp/?p=189#comment-352 I’m afraid that I’m still in the “Joel’s a pretentious schmuck” camp. That article is written from the point of view that the software developers are royalty and that the rest of the company are merely servants. And I say that’s BS.

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