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On the beach: liquid software engineering
After intense competition from other students to stay and enjoy an
exceptionally well watered August in Glasgow, Martin Ritchie drew the short
straw and was forced to accept a free ticket to tediously sunny Perth, Western
Australia. Carrying only an old Ipaq loaded with miscellaneous documents in a
back pocket, he was met off the plane by immigration officials muttering about
the dumping of skilled software engineers on poor old Oz ("In the good old
days they sent people with street skills, that an immigrant can use straight
away, now we get people actually believing we're the Knowledge Nation"). He
was rushed off and chained to a computer to start installing Grumps software.
(One of the problems implied by Moore's law is that the number of computers it
takes to immobilise a student doubles every 7 years.) A recent message from
him recommending beers and the beach as a cure for jetlag suggest that
antipodean physiology may be the inverse of ours. His story could be used in
recruitment to frighten students with the awful fate awaiting those signing up
for unfashionable courses like computing science and then compounding the
mistake by doing well.
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