Does the cross-training of subject-matter experts and programmers result in better software?
When people talk about end-user programming, even Smalltalk or Logo, you are attempting to teach programming semantics, the idea of variables, state, and all those things you learn in programming 101, 102, 103 and 104 to the subject matter expert. How is that going to help anyone? The process will still be the same, and you are trying to get a subject matter expert motivated to become a programmer. It brings us to this absurd process of people proposing new subjects that programmers or subject matter experts should learn. Where is this going to stop? Is the solution to burden the curriculum even further? Should programmers be taught technical writing? We shouldn’t build our future by piling on more tasks–that’s not how Moore’s Law has been accomplished. Semiconductors didn’t improve their reliability and performance by exhorting workers to do a better job, wash their hands more often or put in longer hours. It was accomplished by mechanizing a greater and greater portion of the proces
