programming

(Note: I wrote this article for a programming venue a while back, but I didn't end up publishing it. As I've been flat out these last few weeks preparing for summer workshops, I thought I'd share it with you. Regular blogging resumes after I get back from my NASA seminar next week. P.S. I had fun checking out the Constellation Program - what geek can resist new spaceships?)

In my previous post (Productivity for Programmers, #2: Efficient vs. Effective) I gushed about Chad Fowler's book My Job Went to India: And All I Got Was This Lousy Book.

Bob Walsh and I are writing a series on Productivity for Programmers, which started with his article Productivity for Programmers, #1: Trusted Systems. In it he identified five trusted systems every programmer should have: Tasks, Decisions, Version Control, Code Snippets, and Bugs. I like Bob's break down (no, not the psychological one resulting from writing "Clear Blogging" - different story), so I want to talk about a related characteristic - Efficiency vs. Effectiveness.

Efficiency

The trusted systems are important, and they are about doing things right, what Drucker called "efficiency" (see David J. Anderson's article Drucker on Effectiveness for a bit more).