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Re:Lost in Translation: Writing treaties in two languages ca... by jfengel on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:51PM (#21019340)
The way I see it, that's what a developer is: a tool for translating fuzzy requirements into rigid definitions. Sometimes they're just plain lazy about that task, but even when it's done well, they discover vagueness and incompleteness in the specifications. They use their judgment to fill that in, but they're often wrong, especially when they don't really know the domain.

Programmers want rigid requirements, because that makes their job easier. Indeed, it does their real job for them. If we had a really rigid way of writing specs, you'd just write a compiler for it. The real job of a programmer is precisely about playing intermediary between the true rigor of the computer and the pseudo-rigor of requirements.

Re:Lost in Translation: Writing treaties in two languages ca... by watwut on Friday September 20, 2019 @04:28AM (#21024406)
I was hinting toward frustrating programmers, testers and manager, who don't bother reading requirements (or think they know better) and proceed to code and test against own imagination. Despite requirements being unambiguous about this or that point.
Re:Lost in Translation: Writing treaties in two languages ca... by jfengel on Friday September 20, 2019 @03:12PM (#21030179)
Oh, definitely agreed. We programmers do rather suck at our profession, especially as I define our profession. Not all of us, and not all the time, but we get rather feted for our technical sk1llz while failing to deliver the thing we're actually supposed to be doing -- even just outright ignoring it.