Comment Q:How do tool makers earn a living? (Score 1) 240
Q:How do tool smiths earn a reputation? Q:How do consultants retire from coding? The answer my friends is obvious, build more tools which are also more complicated and require constant throwing away of previous tools and work. Git is fine and interesting but has not solved the most important problem which is merging. And neither has the VSS, SVN, or VCS or anything else I am aware of. I haven't used a build tool yet that doesn't solve the dependency inconsistencies or merge issues that crop up. Code review tools are nice to have but only address the impact of changes in a very narrow area, usually only in the area where someone is looking which is often just a few lines of code.
Test automation is OK, but amounts to nothing more that regression testing. I have seen very few negative tests even though pumping noise into a program is easy to do.
I get this uneasy feeling now and then that we are focused on shiny things ("Oh look! it uses [funny animal | cartoon character ] as a mascot!"] and not looking at the fundamental, and sometimes hard, problems which if solved, or at least tamed a little, would really help.
