Caroline Foster

I am a JavaProgrammer in Amsterdam, TheNetherlands but I grew up in the NorthEastOfEngland?. I'm also studying part-time at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation in Amsterdam to try and satisfy my interest in ArtificialIntelligence and NaturalLanguageProcessing.

I'm trying out iterative TestDrivenDevelopment as a way of:

coping with incomplete requirements up front
introducing automated regression tests
encouraging more modular design

I'm also studying DesignPatterns in the hope that they will allow me to generate better designs more quickly. TestDrivenDesignAndPatterns is a discussion of them both by RalphJohnson.

I used to work in manufacturing as a shop floor engineer, and part of my work involved StatisticalProcessControl. I haven't done much thinking about how techniques used in the manufacturing industry could support software engineering, but recent discussions in my regular web haunts have led me to believe that I should. More to follow I hope.

There's some discussion on this site regarding the AnalogyBetweenProgrammingAndManufacturing. As someone with direct experience of both, I would say that applications are actually quite like manufacturing processes/machines/robots: you design them, you build them, you run them (and tweak them) until no-one needs the output anymore. The programmers are the engineers - the users are the operators. So I would tend to agree with the views expressed in TheSourceCodeIsTheDesign, but I would also point out that there is more to manufacturing than merely flicking a switch. And there is more to building an executable than merely running a compiler.

Quotes from me that people liked...

I regard it as a basic programmer's right that I should be able to, at any time, check out all the source code and build it. (thank you SteveBerczuk)

Hey Caroline - re your comment above I used to work in manufacturing as a shop floor engineer, and part of my work involved StatisticalProcessControl. I haven't done much thinking about how techniques used in the manufacturing industry could support software engineering, but recent discussions in my regular web haunts have led me to believe that I should. More to follow I hope. - you might be interested in the SixSigmaDiscussion page? Also, there is a mailing list on Six Sigma in Software Engineering - see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/6S_SWSE . -- KarenSmiley

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