[SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux (David Green)

Steve Tockey Steve.Tockey at construx.com
Fri Feb 23 11:01:51 CET 2018


¡°Coding camps¡± scare the crap out of me. . .


·¢×ÔÎÒµÄ iPad

On Feb 23, 2018, at 1:14 AM, Chris Hills <safetyyork at phaedsys.com<mailto:safetyyork at phaedsys.com>> wrote:

OFF TOPIC RANT (not had my coffee yet!)

On this very subject¡­ both of them ¡°connotations of words¡± and ¡°coding¡±   I was at a presentation on how to Save the World by teaching ¡°coding¡± to all children because the UK needed ¡°coders¡±  to create the Brave New World¡­ Apparently being above ¡°to code¡± was as important as reading and breathing!!!

All the way through the Q&A I kept talking about ¡°code-monkeys¡±  (being deliberately provocative) and the presenter said I was ¡°insulting¡± by using that label


I pointed out that teaching someone  ¡°coding¡±   in the way he was  suggesting did not make them a ¡°programmer¡± let alone a ¡°Software Engineer¡±.  Apparently all you need for ¡°programming¡± is to be able ¡°to code¡± the rest is just ¡°admin¡± and ¡°management¡±   SO you can see that not so much the words but the connotations and concepts are rather powerful if imprecise. We are talking about culture not engineering reports. Try addressing a female colleagues as ¡°luv¡±  or your director as ¡°mate¡± and see how powerful words are.

Incidentally If the coders wanted to find out about design methods and processes ¡°they could google them¡± but the presenter had had no idea what they would google (other than ¡°agile¡±) and he was one of the coding teachers!

One day I will prompt Andrew to present the ¡°A model¡± process for developing code¡­.  (in the next MISRA press release we discussed? )

I also pointed out that people can use computers without needing to ¡°code¡± just as much as 98% of car drivers never open the hood let alone service their cars these days.  (and 99% of people make up statistics on the spot)

END RANT.

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Andrew Banks
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 5:36 AM
To: 'Todd Carpenter'; systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux (David Green)

Todd wrote:

>> Guess how difficult it is now to bring up Millenials in that same culture?
>> Especially when the majority of "computer scientists" are merely programmers,
>> and don't have either safety or security as part of their required training?

Please do not get me started on the current vogue of teaching ¡°Coding¡± in schools¡­ feature drag and drop, with no specification  and no design ¨C where each assignment starts with a blank file :(



A

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