Program Modification

Book excerpt: THE PROGRAMMER-ANALYST'S ROLE The pages that follow are based on observation, over the past few years, of the work done by programmer analysts. Although they come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and are trained in a variety of ways, they seem with rare exception to have at least two things in common . • They have been trained to create, to organize new data structures, new programs. As a result they tend to regard the development of new projects as their principle job, and accept only with reluctance so-called maintenance work, for which hardly anyone volunteers . • They have received no training at all in how to modify and develop existing programs and data structures. Programmers assigned to maintenance tasks come to consider their role as minor, their work tedious, and sometimes take such an assignment as an invitation to seek a job elsewhere. It is only natural that people take little interest in work for which they have not been trained. If we examine the curriculum of courses for beginning or for experienced data processing personnel, we find in fact that training concentrates exclusively on program design and data file organization, to the detriment of modification and development.