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IBM Trying To Patent Timed Code Inspection
Posted by
kdawson
on Saturday April 26, @10:15PM
from the walking-through-a-patent-minefield dept.
from the walking-through-a-patent-minefield dept.
theodp writes "A just-published IBM patent application for a Software Inspection Management Tool claims to improve software quality by taking a chess-clock-like approach to code walkthroughs. An inspection rate monitor with 'a pause button, a resume button, a complete button, a total lines inspected indication, and a total lines remaining to be inspected indication' keeps tabs on participants' progress and changes color when management's expectations — measured in lines per hour — are not being met."
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sounds fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:sounds fantastic (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people are more "careful and attentive to" looking like they're busy, as opposed to actually thinking about the problem at hand, when someone's looking over their shoulder.
Yes, we need better metrics to determine performance. However, we should do our Jedi Knight code warrior hand-waving thing and say "these are not the metrics you're looking for." This is a sop to cover up inadequacies (in both the people managing, and their methodologies) the previous steps to the development process. Where is the story mod, with a "-1 Fucktarded" option, when we need it?
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Parent
Might not be a bad thing to patent. (Score:4, Funny)
-jcr
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Parent
Perhaps a good patent (Score:5, Funny)
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What it means (Score:2, Funny)
Note to self: (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy any IBM software after this awful thing gets approved.
And in case any management types happen to be reading this - programming isn't freaking bricklaying. You can't say "well the wall needs 120 bricks, and 1 person can lay 1 brick in one minute, so that's two hours work. Or 1 hour's worth of work for two people."
Read this book, [wikipedia.org] and then get back to us IBM.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Note to self: (Score:5, Funny)
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
Yeah, because nothing says quality code reviews... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What about code WRITING speed??? (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I think programmers should meet management expectations for keystrokes per second including backspace! I mean backspace means the programmer is correcting his mistakes!!!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OK but I call dibs on the patent for software that measures if managers are alienating and burning out their underlings at the specified ra
what a stupid stupid idea (Score:2)
That was my other thought (Score:3, Funny)
Bingo, sir. Programmers are excellent at beating the system. That's our job. Figuring out systems.
You're gonna see a lot of code like this:
for(
// i holds the count
// The next line makes sure we count to ten
// This increments
int i=0;
i<=10;
Re:what a stupid stupid idea (Score:5, Funny)
He was ready to place semicolons on a separate line too, if management wanted even higher efficiency.
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Parent
Re:what a stupid stupid idea (Score:5, Informative)
If I am understanding this correctly, the article refers to lines inspected, not written. So this is for the quality-control guys and not the main programmers.
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Parent
Quality... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of those patents based clearly on conjecture. Seriously - is there anyone stupid enough to try it, or anyone stupid enough to work in an environment that relies on this kind of QA?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Metropolis.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). Excellent movie BTW.
The worker at the power plant collapses during a a shift which was too long and required to many new operations demanded by a clock-like device. The power plant nearly explodes, because he can not keed up with the pace of this clock-like device.
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The summary looks like misleading flamebait to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I've only flicked through the patent application so far, but it doesn't seem very much like what the submitter makes out.
From what I can see, the implication that this has anything to do with management harassing the developers and testers is completely conjecture on the part of the slashdot submitter. The only context in which the word "manage" appears in the entire application is as part of the phrase "management tool", which to me implies that it's supposed to be entirely to help the testing and development staff. (Okay, there's one occurance which is "inspection process manager".)
I know that IBM has a famous history of having associated productivity with lines of code, but I really don't think they're being quite so dim-witted with this one. I haven't read the application in detail, but to me it looks more like someone's been developing a tool to help with code inspection. By the looks of it, it has a certain way of displaying the code, it has a method of recording noted defects and comments, and it has a feature of timing how long things are taking and how long a user is spending on certain parts of a code-base.
I can't see any direct implication in the patent application that this is primarily for management to measure staff performance to compare with pre-defined expectations. On the other hand I can see a lot of references in the patent application to the code inspector themselves using this tool to assist their work. I think it's much more likely that someone running an inspection could use such a tool to help them keep track of the most fragile parts of the code, and which areas are tying up the most of their time. If there was a deadline for inspection, it'd probably also help to highlight if you were spending far too much time in one place without having even reached other areas that might be important.
Whether it would work or be any use at all it another issue, but if it's a completely wacky idea then it wouldn't be the first that someone tried to patent. Many good patented ideas seemed silly or ridiculous before a working implementation was produced to demonstrate otherwise, but if an inventor had waited until it was clearly useful before patenting it, it'd be a lot harder.
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more ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
(responding to my own post with more ideas) ...
-2000 Lines Of Code (Score:5, Interesting)
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Seen this (Score:3, Insightful)
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