Computer Programming in Industry

1. Computer Programming in Industry • Paul Street • Information Services & Systems (ISS) • paul.street@kcl.ac.uk • ISS on Web: • http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/ or even • http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/schools/hlsp/pse • Book: • Information Systems Development, Avison & Fitzgerald

2. Nearly all companies plan and manage their IT as a key characteristic of their activities • Data • Over half of the small and medium sized businesses without a Disaster Recovery Plan that lose their data because of an accident go out of business • Software Development Expertise is Big Money • IBM and Rational Software Corp. announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire the equity of Rational at a price of approximately $2.1 billion in cash. • Rational provides open, industry standard tools, best practices and services for developing business applications and building software products and systems, including embedded software for devices such as cell phones and medical systems. (deal agreed 2002)

3. Usually, the key question about a development is the likely return and the confidence that that can be delivered £ per time Benefits Costs 1 2 3 4 Time

4. As a result of this very few businesses develop their own core applications software • Build • Greater benefit • Less dependence • Smoother use • Less industry risk • Closer fit • Buy • More rapid benefit • Predictable costs • Less technology risk • Less skills risk • Less overall risk

5. Many people are involved with a business’s software, but even in a technical environment not so many are programmers Programmers Non-Programmers Vendors Development Support Occasional Programmers IT infrastructure

6. Developments involve change, and are therefore invariably run as projects, regardless of the scope, languages etc Technical Design & Build User Analysis & Training project reports to budget holder Project Management IT Infrastructure

7. Requirements Procurement Coding Testing/QA Rollout Formal developments will follow a defined process, specific to the business, with the aim of managing the risks Example: Costs of Problems Requirements $140 Coding $1000 Testing $7000 Rollout $14000

8. General Purpose Visual Basic (etc) Perl (Python) PHP SQL Delphi Unix scripting Software Engineering C C++ Java/J2EE C# (Fortran - numerical applications) Presentational html Javascript SAS Postscript Choice of programming language is by the same criteria Sources: general knowledge based on work and recruitment discussions, Tiobe (based on Google data), Open-Source projects analysis, Usenet stats

9. What Computer Programming Have You Done? Examination What Language, How You Used It, Technical Aspects “Outside” (it does not always mean this, but often it might) “The job you’ll be doing needs an involvement with programming, but I’m not sure of all the details (we haven’t worked them out yet) and we’ve had a mixed experience with new people beforehand.” Or in other words, do you by any chance know anything about: user requirements, working with packages, and coping with change? (see for example opim.wharton.upenn.edu/home/pdf/ 2002C/OPIM311Syllabus2002C.pdf )

10. Conclusions • Your transferable skills as engineers are highly relevant to computer systems development • Experience with a particular language is less important than the quality of the experience, that is a project with other people and evolving requirements is very useful (albeit difficult) • Many programmers are more closely defined by the type of business they work with, and their understanding of that, than the particular language they work in • That is even more true of many other people involved with systems development activity, so be aware of chances to gather business knowledge