Software Development & Europe, a mirror

I am about to hit the BP again but could not stop thinking an exchange that I had with someone on usenet. This person who also teaches proposed that automated testing is not relieable and the only solution is manual testing (not exactly with these words but that's the only conclusion that could be drawn)

But when confronted with the economic reality of the fixed physical throuput capacity of humans got into trouble: what to do with a growing codebase? was he going to force people to move their hands and eyes faster? So his only solution is to use more inputs to produce the same good?

This is bad lesson in economics 101. It should take less inputs to create a good over time. That is in essence efficiency.

This is the same approach as "pair programming": adding more people to see if they make it work. If recent ship date delays are a guide, adding people to a flawed process just does not work.

So here we are several years after the tech bust we are, in short, running to stand still:

Manual testing advocates think they can get it right after 25 years.

Traditional testing tool companies have "somewhat fixed" the problems they created (quoting a Forrester report) But what about non PC gadgets? Can they run inside a Pocket PC?

An XP advocates think that the solution is to add more people to:

1. Ask developers to write their tests, as if they had time to write their own code.
2. Ask developers to add special code so they can write their own tests.
3. Ask testers to write code that is going to become useless in the next round of refactoring.

And then came France and its PCE (first employment contract, or close enough) the students and the unions kept the PM from turning PCE into law. The PCE was an attempt make France's laber market more fluid and create jobs.

PCE is not a law which may have been a bad law but France and Europe in general need something along the changes that are needed in the software industry:

The population is growing old, so more immigration or more natality is needed.

In 2004 just Spain had positive demographic growth.

According to the OCDE, just 2 european universities are among the top 20/top 50 in the world. The rest are in USA, Japan, India, etc.

These two are english. According to a survey published recently when Europeans emmigrate, they mostly choose England because of the jobs and pay.

With China and India growing into world powers, what is Europe going to bring in the future to the table of big decision makers?

Education? Job opportunities? a healthy work force?

Anyways that business plan is waiting...