November 2004
Have you ever noticed the differences between "bush pilots" and
commercial pilots?
That analogy is the perfect example of the difference between most automation and IT programmers.
Bush pilots, or at least our understanding of them, are pilots that don't get their job done the prettiest, or the most perfect, or even in a way that that would be considered "best practices". But they do get the job done that most other pilots would not attempt in the first place.
Their counterparts, the commercial pilots, have far longer and extensive check lists, many more detailed reports, a lot more restrictions, always operate in perfect / "sanitized" conditions, and don't have to take off if everything is not perfect.
We're not saying that commercial pilots are bad, just different.
Commercial pilots find reasons not to fly. Bush pilots find ways to fly.
Commercial pilots would be horrified by many things that bush pilots get by with and bush pilots could never live within all the rules and constraints that commercial pilots have to follow.
So once again you're probably asking yourself -- what does all this have to do with automation programming? Good question.
80% of your automation programmers are bush pilots. 80% of your IT programmers are commercial pilots.
IT programmers typically don't want to take off without a database administrator setting up their data and stored procedures, a thoroughly detailed, and UML diagrammed, written specification. Commercial, we mean IT, programmers also need a huge budget, test scripts, large amounts of time, and other things that the bush programmers would consider "niceties".
Automation programmers typically have half the budget and time, no database, no written specifications, no up-front user analysis and requirements definition -- none of the things that IT programmers consider essential to getting off on a good start.
In other words, automation programmers have to fly by-the-seat-of-their-pants.
Don't get us wrong. Sometimes we do come across projects where the customer has specified things out in good detail, done the user requirements analysis, and expects a validation. That is like flying first class.
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