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Comment Re:Difficult != Safe (Score 2) 161

My customer is the patient and the FDA.

In all likelihood neither of those is your customer. Your customer is the person tasked with actually using the device, most likely a nurse or doctor, and the organization that pays you for it. The FDA is certainly not your customer. The FDA's job is to ensure you aren't selling snake oil. They do not buy or use your equipment. They are a regulator not a customer. Just because you have to please them doesn't make them your customer.

IAAQISDFAFRC. (I am a quality IS developer for a FDA-regulated company.)

Rarely is the end user the customer. Not to discount the needs of the user, but the doctor or nurse using the product is not the same as the customer paying the bills and setting the requirements.

The FDA is a regulator, but that does not capture the relationship between the company and the government entity. For example, I'm selling a vial of serum A. The regulator wants to make sure the vials actually contain serum A and if there is an issue, I can track down which vials went where and to whom so I can send out a notification or a recall if necessary.

But the labels and packaging with the vials, the FDA will have more input on those than my "customers." Documentation on validation of my systems is going to be more visible to the FDA than my "customers." Reports on product complaints, process deviations, documentation discrepancies, all go to the FDA, not my "customers."

For the software developer working under the regulations of the FDA and other such agencies, those agencies are very much our customers.

As for the example above, regulation may tell you what data the software needs to collect and how to handle that data, but it will not tell you in specifics how to collect that data. So for that nurse, required fields and commonly-used functions should be quick and easy to access. That certain fields are required, I've never known a developer to favor requiring fields when not necessary, so that almost certainly is due to the customer. That the nurse has to enter a value each time and not have the data default to a value from the last record, that's regulation. If it wasn't necessary for the nurse to take the measurement at each exam, the field wouldn't be required. Having a default value is the path to inaccurate data and false records.

Comment Re:No shit? (Score 4, Insightful) 161

It really depends. Talking to people is often better. In large user bases that are isolated, this is hard; but when you're doing i.e. department-to-department, you're far better off asking. If you're writing software systems for Accounting and Finance, for example, there's 200 people working there. You want to interface with the Accounting Manager and Finance Manager--who will be doing, in part, exactly what's proscribed here--while also communicating with some of the actual people in these departments. This will get you a much better understanding of requirements than just "Well I don't know a fucking thing about finance, but I watch the finance people bang their heads on this shit a lot so we should do it this way instead! It would be better!"

What happens often with that scenario is by talking to the people in Finance, the developer ends up thinking he or she has learned something about finance, and can write up requirements which read well and will be accepted by the users, but actually has very little understanding of what the users need and will produce awful software.

There are a few reasons for this. First, every area of expertise has its jargon. Often jargon is an ordinary word with a different, specific meaning in a certain context. So better to follow someone through their work flow and know you're getting lost or not understanding some steps than to have a description you think you understand.

Second, something obvious to anyone who has even a 101 intro level of understanding in a field may be completely unexpected to someone outside of that field. When talking to the folks in Finance, there is some basic assumption so elementary they never mention because everyone in finance covered it in day one, but is completely unknown to the developer with no finance background. Talking will almost never solve this issue. They won't think to mention it; the developer won't know what question to ask.

Third, we relegate tasks to "muscle memory." When describing oft-performed tasks, people invariable miss steps. There are little things that, while vital to successful completion of the process, we forget just because we've done them so many times, they happen without conscious thought. You won't know where these are until you try to replicate results from a procedure someone has described, or if you observe that someone doing the procedure.

So for someone who doesn't know a fucking thing about finance who is developing a system to be used for finance, there's so much more to be gained by watching the finance people bang their heads than just talk to the finance people. As for the Finance Manager, talking to this person should be strictly reserved to some or all of 1) budget of the project, 2) timeline of the project, 3) availability of the finance people for requirements gathering.

Comment Re:Not sure stop listening is right (Score 2) 161

I think its more about understanding needs. Don't stop at listening may be better. Listen to what they say "I want drop box" and think what does that mean?. Does it mean "I want some third party to make everything work"..... no it means they want a way to make working with files so seamless that it seems like they have a single global filesystem...without having to think about it.

Which is why the developer needs to stop listen and start looking. "I want a drop box" is useless as a business requirement. Even "they want a way to make working with files so seamless that it seems like they have a single global filesystem" is useless. Does the developer have the same understanding as the end user of a term like 'filesystem'?

You are right that it is about understanding needs. However for the daily tasks users perform most often, the repetitive tasks that cause the most pain, the user does not know and cannot articulate what he or she needs. This is not a slight against users.

Here's an exercise: write a procedure, as if you were verbally instructing someone, as how to tie a shoe. Don't look at your shoes! Without visual aids or string for demonstration, with just words, tell someone how to tie a shoe. Unless you've spent a lot of effort dedicated to writing detailed instructions, you are probably not going to come up with a good guide to tying shoes. Does this mean you don't know how to tie your shoes?

No, it means two things. One, some things are easier to communicate through demonstration. And two, when we repeat the same task enough times, it becomes part of "muscle memory." We go on auto-pilot and do things we don't realize we are doing.

I agree with folks saying this is not news, but I also agree with the folks saying this is not done nearly enough.

Comment Re:Physics (Score 1) 279

I admit I may be applying some creative misremembering myself but I definitely recall whether things were bonds or anti-bonds to be somewhat arbitrary and bond energies and lengths were certainly never presented as something that could be derived from first principles.

Which is why at the better programs students take physical chemistry before organic chemistry. P-chem should cover electron orbitals, affinities, and bonds enough that o-chem is a logical application of principles, and not just memorization and intuition.

It seems most chemistry majors and almost all pre-meds do that sequence backwards (organic before physical (if they take physical at all)), so in that aspect I understand the attitude towards organic presented in TFA.

What I argue is there is nothing inherent in organic chemistry that means it must be so. In e.g. calculus, there is no way to memorize all the answers. So should students rely on intuition? Or should they learn the rules of calculus and apply them in a reasonable manner?

For me the most bothersome part of TFA is not what this student has to say, but the quotes from professors and educators. That a science educator would say something along the lines of "if a student has really good math skills, they can slide through physics, but you can’t do that in orgo," that's just shameful. It leads to this attitude from the student, that organic "doesn’t require equations or math."

Comment Some disgreement (Score 3, Informative) 732

go read the book! It's good.

If you're a teenager (or younger), yes, give it a read. If you're an adult, meh. There are worse ways to pass a rainy afternoon, but it's not a must read. It's young-adult fiction that does not hold up well for adults.

As for the movie, this is rare movie I thought could be longer. You get one hit of every major plot point--one fight with the bully in the first school, one interaction with Peter, one training battle with each team, etc.

What gets lost is why Ender thinks the way he does. In the movie, he's just born this tactical prodigy. In the book, he's a gifted kid, but we get to see how he learns to use those gifts.

And I didn't think the give-away for the final twist was that bad. Over all, I left not feeling angry for the money spent.

Comment Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score 1) 284

Arguably, we have a certain talent for importing talent... Scoring all the Jewish physicists when the Nazis drove them out, in order to build a bomb, and then scoring all the Nazi rocket scientists when the Soviets drove them out, in order to build something to deliver it with...

Playing both ends against everybody, awww yeah...

I have mod points, but I don't see the "+1 America Fark Yeah!" option.

Comment What is this? (Score 3, Insightful) 53

She may or may not be the most successful Slashdot submitter of all time, based on the percentage of her submissions that show up on the front page, but she is absolutely in the top 10.

If you don't have the data to determine if she is or if she is not the most successful submitter of all time, then I am skeptical you have the data to know she is in the top 10. There could be 1 person ahead of her on that list, but it's impossible there could be 10?

I know this is off topic and petty, but in a way, not so much. A common lament on /. is the poor state of writing on digital technologies, software, and development. To have such weak writing in a submission about a writer, it's a little sad.

Comment Re:This seems overly complex. (Score 1) 114

The only way I see to "hoax-proof" a journal is to require reproduction of the results during peer review.

But don't all serious fields have that already?

No, they do not. I have never heard of a reviewer trying to reproduce the results. I have reviewed plenty of papers. I will spend about 2-4 hours reviewing something that took the author months of work. All I do is read the paper, make a recommendation, write a few paragraphs of feedback, and email it back to the journal. That's it. This is an unpaid process. There is no way I am going to put my own work on hold for several months to repeat the experiment.

Well, I hope you do better with the papers you recommend than you did with my comment. If you continue to the sentence after the one you quote, you'll see I'm talking about what happens _after_ a paper is published--other researchers attempt to reproduce the results, either directly or indirectly.

Comment Re:Physics (Score 1) 279

So let's not talk about neutrons, or any other subatomic particles. Except electrons... Is that an exception that one ought to memorize?

Yes, in the sense that a recipe should cover all the ingredients not to be included. That's a very philosophical questions you ask, like considering the role of silence in music.

I admit to hyperbole and the basic rules of organic chem are more extensive than I list above. (There's an excellent post elsewhere in the thread where someone points out considerations in addition to charge, such as molecular structure that might hinder movement of particles and functional groups.)

But my point is, chemistry--organic and otherwise--is not mysticism. It is not a list of facts to memorize. There are rules, and learning the application of those rules will get you through any undergraduate course. Rote memorization is just the tactic that seems to be favored by pre-med students.

Struggling with organic does not make someone a bad student, or a bad doctor, or even a bad chemist. But it also does not change the nature of organic chemistry. Learn the rules, apply them, pass the class. Nothing I've read in this thread convinces me that strategy applies to organic chem any less that it applies to other subjects.

Comment Re:This seems overly complex. (Score 1) 114

Lest we forget, a large number of submissions from the paid journals had data that was not reproducible

I admit my eyes started to glaze over and I didn't finish reading TFS because it seemed like a lot of hand waving and busy work to no real efect, but isn't this proposal, well, a lot of hand waving and busy work to no real effect?

The only way I see to "hoax-proof" a journal is to require reproduction of the results during peer review.

But don't all serious fields have that already? Getting through the review process for publication is just the first step--not all published results are inducted into the cannon of acepted knowledge. Publication basically just puts the method and results out there to be examined by a larger audience.

Which is why publications aren't a good measuring stick--for an indivual theory or personal success. The real measure is citations. If lots of other papers are citing a paper (and not just to say they couldn't reproduce the original results) you have a better chance that paper is not a hoax. If someone has a long list of publications with many citations, that person is likely trust-worthy.

Comment Re:Physics (Score 1) 279

anywhere you have a dearth of electrons is positive

Except neutrons, which contain no electrons but are not positive... Is that an exception that one ought to memorize?

No. In organic chemistry you're considering atoms and molecules. Neutrons without associated protons are neither, and so are outside the scope of the course. (I could be wrong, it's been a while since I took organic, but I don't think so.)

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