At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.
There is a strong movement towards increased accountability for software developers and software development organizations.
At the end of April I archived 'Curses' and Inform, and announced them on the newsgroups.
I'm really good at making software for publishing.
Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.
Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, then, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver.
First, I'd like to see the basic tools such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, database interfaces, GUI builders, CAD tools, and so forth fully support the ISO standard.
Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.
Software is usually accompanied by documentation in the form of big fat scary manuals that nobody ever reads. In fact, for the past five years most of the manuals shipped with software products have actually been copies of Stephen King's The Stand with new covers pasted on.
