My First Mistake…

Okay, actually not *MY* first mistake, but a homage to Jon Bentley. No, not the bloke from the Gadget Show, but the really smart guy that wrote Programming Pearls and well, lots of stuff. If you don’t know who he is, and you work in the computer industry, go google him.

Anyway, I’m throwing together some slides for a lecture coming up. I made a point of re-reading Bentley’s Programming Pearls columns. My favourite columns are the first and the one covering estimating (“Back of the envelope calculations” as Bentley describes them).

If I can quote directly from the first column in the book:

The progammers question was simple: “How do I sort a disk file?” Before I tell you how I made my first mistake, let me give you a chance to do better than I did. What would you have said?

Bentley’s self-confessed first mistake? He answered the question!

The column is not about avoiding an answer or being devious, evasive or sinister. It’s about listening and understanding what the actual question (requirement?) is. In the Business Analysis or Systems Analysis world we have any number of techniques to try and teach us to ask insightful questions and use the answers to derive greater insight and value.

Bentley concludes that understanding the right problem was around 90% of the solution. The example that Bentley talks us through may well have been specific and very technical, but the parallels are there.