Re: PG: Hackers and Painters

[Scott McKay <address@hidden>]

At 2:37 PM -0400 5/19/03, Matt Curtin wrote:
>Steve Dekorte <steve@dekorte.com> writes:
>
>>  Would Picasso have made better paintings with someone looking over
>>  his shoulder and stepping in occasionally?
>
>Perhaps.  Maybe Leonardo da Vinci's work got to the level that it did
>in part through the direction that he received when he apprenticed
>under Andrea del Verrocchio.  Leonardo working on an angel in the
>"Baptism of Christ" wouldn't have been allowed to do just anything.
>The angel might well have been his, but I cannot imagine that
>Verrocchio wouldn't be allowed to look over Leonardo's shoulder,
>offering guidance along the way.
>
>Is there any documentation about how the collaboration actually worked
>in practice?  Sure, we have no evidence that the great painters worked
>on the same part of a painting, but do we know how much the chief got
>to tell the others to do?  Paul?
>
>(I find it somewhat odd that I'm arguing the side of this that I am,
>as I'm fiercely independent.  On the other hand, my experience has
>always been that when I can collaborate with the right person who
>shares my values and goals, my work, and my collaborator's, is better
>than either of us would have produced completely independently.  One
>might get the inspiration initially and turn it into something really
>cool, but as it grows and begins to take greater and more solid form,
>getting input from many directions helps.  A hack drived from more
>than one source...an "interhack". :-)
>

The system of apprentice-journeyman-master craftsman is
well understood and books galore have been written on it.

In my opinion, one of the great failures of the current
practice of software is its failure to retain this model.
The notion that some random person, no matter how talented
or intelligent, can just start out writing software with
no guidance from "master craftsmen" is not only arrogant,
it practically verges on insanity.

There are few complex fields that behave as badly as we do.
Here are some of the fields I know of that use this old
system of guilds: plumbers, electricians, carpenters,
print-makers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, cooks,
architects, any field of science which involves getting
a PhD and then doing post-grad work, etc, etc.