Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The inability of programmers and other data processing personnel to
successfully professionalize raises a perplexing question for the historian:
Given the apparent interest in professionalization on the part of both
employers and practitioners, why were these efforts so ineffective? As
was described earlier, industrial employers in the 1960s complained not
so much about technical incompetence as a general lack of professional-
ism among programmers. “It was his distressing lack of professional
attributes that most often undermines his work and destroys his man-
agement's confi dence,” declared Malcolm Gotterer. “Too frequently
these people, while exhibiting excellent technical skills, are non-
professional in every other aspect of their work.”
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Increased profes-
sionalism would presumably address the most frequent complaints
leveled against data processing personnel: an overreliance on idiosyn-
cratic craft techniques; an arrogant disregard for proper lines of author-
ity; shoddy production quality; and a lack of commitment to the best
interests of the organization. On the surface, the professionalization of
programming appeared to be an ideal solution to many of the most del-
eterious symptoms of the burgeoning software crisis.
There are a number of explanations for the failure of most profes-
sionalization programs. Internal rivalries within the computing commu-
nity undermined the effectiveness of groups such as the ACM and the
DPMA. No single organization could meet the needs of a diverse com-
munity of computer people that included everyone from PhD mathemati-
cians to high school dropout keypunch operators. As Louis Fein pointed
out in his discussion of the ACM's crisis of identity, “It is not clear . . . that
an organization can play simultaneously the role of a profession, of an
industry, and of a science. . . . I cannot see that ACM members, or IEEE
Computer Group members, or DPMA members, or Simulations Councils,
Inc. members, are members of a profession. They are practitioners or
scientists or engineers or programmers—members of a technical
society.”
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The attempts of the computer scientists to rationalize the
practice of programming and produce a body of generally applicable
programming theory set them at odds with vocational programmers. The
seemingly inconsistent and idiosyncratic practices of working program-
mers were used as foils for the elegant constructions of the academic
computer scientists. The attempts of the vocational programmers to
appeal to the language and ideals of science and engineering were ridi-
culed. When asked to explain the linguistic transition from coder to
programmer, the prominent computer scientist John Backus dismissed it
as purely rhetorical: “It's the same reason that janitors are now called
